Transfer to Vanguard taking too long

moedeeb

I am moving my Pension from an Aviva Staff scheme to Vanguard. The Aviva scheme does not accept Origo electronic transfers but so far Vanguard have not progressed their side at all. I requested the move on June 1st and I am almost at the point where I cancel and go to an alternative platform. 

Vanguard are polite when I call and promise to escalate with the pension team but still nothing seems to happen. Anyone had a recent similar transfer (non Origo) to other providers e.g  Hargreaves Landsdown, A J Bell , iii as I need to access my tax free cash to meet some financial commitments.

Aviva have been prompt throughout so they are not in any way at fault, Once they get the proper information from receiving scheme they will sell the investments to cash  and move within about 10 working days.

thanks

Pat38493

Which part of Aviva is this?  I recently transferred a pension out of Aviva and it was definitely done with Origo.

Have you told Vanguard that it’s a cash transfer?  There was a bit of confusion with mine because I said I wanted to transfer the entire fund including all investments and they took this to mean I wanted an in specie transfer.

moedeeb

It’s the Aviva Staff pension which has specific requirements for paper transfers,  Vanguard are well aware.  Also the funds will need to be sold to cash as they are special staff pension versions which can’t move to a new provider. Vanguard are clear in this as well.  The issue seems to be backlog on the Vanguard side but it’s getting very frustrating and it does not fill me with confidence re their Cust service. 

Pat38493

From what I’ve seen on other threads, my impression is that pension transfers with Origo take a week or two but when it’s not Origo it can take a lot longer.  3 months does seem long if they haven’t actually done anything at all.  

I don’t have any experience with Vanguard nor with transferring a pension that is not via Origo so I’m not sure if other providers will be quicker.

cmundo

I recently transferred a pension to Vanguard via origo.  The first attempt got knocked back by the ceding provider because Vanguard had filled the first name field on ORigo with my policy number (1st concern , how can this happen on an automated process taking specific fields?). When I challenged with Vanguard they told me to submit a new request as rectifying the original one could take weeks!!! Second request went through and funds received within 5 days, but Vanguard have never confirmed receipt and on the pension transfer screen it is flagged as  “outstanding “ .  I invested the funds on the day they hit my account but I’d still be sat here now if I was waiting for Vanguard to confirm receipt.
all in all my view of Vanguard’s processes and customer service is very low.  I’m debating whether to move on to ii.

El_Torro

I have an Aviva workplace pension which I partially transfer out of (in cash) every now and then. This often comes with a delay. The receiving platform tells me it's Aviva's fault. What I'm told is that Aviva send the money but don't put a reference on it, which means the receiving platform can't allocate it to my account. This sometimes takes a bit of moaning and a couple of phone calls from my side to sort out. It's always sorted within 2 or 3 weeks though. 

My point is that maybe Vanguard don't shoulder 100% of the blame here.

r6mile

I started a transfer from Nutmeg to Vanguard and after well over a month nothing had happened. I ended up cancelling the transfer as I changed my mind and will transfer into my workplace pension instead, but I found it very odd that nothing seemed to move.

When I initially transferred into Nutmeg from Royal London I am pretty sure it only took a week or two.

Albermarle

El_Torro said:

I have an Aviva workplace pension which I partially transfer out of (in cash) every now and then. This often comes with a delay. The receiving platform tells me it's Aviva's fault. What I'm told is that Aviva send the money but don't put a reference on it, which means the receiving platform can't allocate it to my account. This sometimes takes a bit of moaning and a couple of phone calls from my side to sort out. It's always sorted within 2 or 3 weeks though. 

My point is that maybe Vanguard don't shoulder 100% of the blame here.

AFAIK, Aviva have a good reputation on quick transfers out, and when I transferred from Aviva it took less than 48 hours !
Could be the part transfers do not go as quick as full ones + Aviva has many different sections/systems depending on their history.

Rich1976

I tried to transfer to Vanguard last year maybe from Hargreaves Lansdown and they were awful. Nothing happened for ages, HL hadn’t received any request from them.
when they were finally contacted apparently Vanguard had only made a partial request for a transfer and not the full fund value. As part of the application I had to specify how much the fund was worth which I provided . HL rejected the request on the basis I had stipulated the full fund value but Vanguard were trying to transfer that financial years contributions only.
I went back to Vanguard to be told no they had requested the full transfer and HL had got it wrong. They told me to submit a new application .
I went back to HL and received a response to say no Vanguard only requested a partial transfer.

so I cancelled the whole thing and have remained with Hargreaves Lansdown since.

my other half as also had issues with transfers from Vanguard in which they hadn’t closed the account down properly and there was the final months tax relief which had been received after the rest of the transfer had been actioned. They then started sending statements for zero balance every quarter or whatever frequency it was . A phone call to them which sounded like an overseas call centre maybe confirmed the account needed to be fully closed and they would put in a request to have this done.

vanguard seem to have this cult status but the service seems to be lacking in fairly basic areas.

dunstonh

I am moving my Pension from an Aviva Staff scheme to Vanguard. The Aviva scheme does not accept Origo electronic transfers but so far Vanguard have not progressed their side at all. I requested the move on June 1st and I am almost at the point where I cancel and go to an alternative platform. 

I moved an Aviva staff pension earlier this year and it took about 3 weeks.

Anyone had a recent similar transfer (non Origo) to other providers e.g  Hargreaves Landsdown, A J Bell , iii as I need to access my tax free cash to meet some financial commitments.The answers to that wont help you as you are specifically transferring from The Aviva staff DC occupational pension to the Vanguard personal pension.      Any other providers are irrelevant.


Aviva have been prompt throughout so they are not in any way at fault, Once they get the proper information from receiving scheme they will sell the investments to cash  and move within about 10 working days.The Aviva staff pension doesn't have a cash facility and doesn't work that way.   There are no settlement periods etc.   Also, the Aviva staff pension accepts all the documentation via email.

Have you completed the transfer forms supplied by the Aviva staff pension yet?

noclaf

Slightly different situation for myself but am slightly frustrated. Requested transfer of a Vanguard S&S ISA to Fidelity.....Vanguard have rejected it saying they don't recognise the account number even though it was copy/pasted from my Vanguard profile.

 I will give it another shot but in meanwhile I've asked Vanguard to clarify which account number should be provided to Fidelity as I noticed the account number quoted on the Vanguard landing page where you can view your investmentsomits the last 3 numbers of the account number found on the 'profile page'...so it's possible I've not given the correct/complete account number. Still rather annoying....