Seeking Advise- Aviva lost our pension fund 😒

DeeNexus

@TadleyBaggie, 
We informed Action Fraud to rule out any fraudulent activity, we were not sure at that stage if this was a Aviva’s mistake or someone got hold of our details somehow and they tried to merge with their own plan 

we just called action fraud for an advise and they suggested to make a complaint, so if this is linked to some kind of fraudulent activity 

squirrelpie

One other thing you might try (probably once Aviva's had 8 weeks to sort the problem out) is to take it to an agony aunt or uncle at a newspaper or (local?) TV or radio station.

DeeNexus

@squirrelpie, Thank you for suggestion

Pat38493

It doesn’t seem clear what has happened here but it could be that fraud or attempted fraud by someone else was part of it, maybe combined with procedural failures at Aviva.

Did Aviva specifically say that the policy was merged with someone else’s with a different name and NI number or are you assuming that - what did they say exactly?  If they said the policy was merged with another one, it could also be that someone managed to create a pension using a fake identity theft and then transfer that one in.  That would be fraud of course and they should have measures in place to stop things like that from happening.

Also - when you say the policy was moved to Aviva - what do you mean?  Do you mean that the provider that you were with before was bought out by Aviva so it became an Aviva administered policy, or do you mean that the pension was transferred into Aviva without your husband’s permission?

Pensions cannot normally be transferred to a different person, unless the pension holder died, so if this has happened Aviva have to sort it out.  Likewise if it’s fraud and Aviva let it happen, they still have to sort it out as far as I know.

Or I suppose it could be as simple as Aviva completely screwed up and they thought they were merging 2 policies of your husband together, but even that they shouldn’t have done without communicating with him.

When you say Aviva didn’t communicate with you - what are they saying about that?  Have you moved house in the meantime and did you inform Aviva that you had moved - they may well say that they have sent you communications to the address they had on file.

Marcon

squirrelpie said:

One other thing you might try (probably once Aviva's had 8 weeks to sort the problem out) is to take it to an agony aunt or uncle at a newspaper or (local?) TV or radio station.

You're confusing Ombudsmen - the 8 weeks applies to FOS, not the Pensions Ombudsman.

OP - get some help now (free and impartial): https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/pensions-and-retirement/pension-problems

DeeNexus

@Pat38493,

original policies (3 pension plans) were bought with Friends Provident which was bought out by Aviva 
so we didn’t transfer- It got automatically transferred from Friends provident to Aviva
but we never got notified 

not sure this was the starting point of administrative mistake

Aviva is not giving us any details - After a month of phone calls and email they replied your three policies were got merged in to Another Aviva policy -but where ? , what’s the new policy number - we asked for latest summary of the new plan - No reply as that policy doesn’t belongs to us 
our online account got locked 
we asked details as we haven’t requested any transfer again no details have been provided to us till date which pension policy our plans have got merged 

We were trying to understand and assuming all possibilities what could have gone wrong -
one assumption - Aviva wrongly entered details and our pension plan appeared in to someone else’s account, that person then transferred in to his own pension plan - if this is the case then it’s a fraud 
hence we called action fraud if it’s linked to any fraudulent activity 

Or its Avila’s failure and they wrongly merged our 3 pension plans with someone else 

All emails , letters we received are one liners and not any thing they are telling us 

Yesterday they sent us £100 compensation cheque via post which we have refused 

DeeNexus

@Marcon

@ Marcon , FOS - is that Financial Ombudsman services ?

thank you for the link, I will look in to it 

DeeNexus

@Pat38493
the address on the file is still our house , when Aviva took over Friends provident , we never got informed or received yearly statements 
And honestly me and my husband didn’t realise until we started looking for our pension fund 

Pat38493

I would hope that the fact they are giving you compensation payments means that they know they have done something wrong and therefore it will be sorted out in due course.  However as someone mentioned above pension providers sometimes move at a pace that makes a snail look like Usain Bolt.  

The compensation payment is not an attempt to replace the £50K - providers often issue these small payments when a complaint is made as compensation for the inconvenience to you, so it doesn’t mean that if you keep the £100 you will not get the pension back.

DeeNexus

@Pat38493,
Thank you for your comments and time , much appreciated