Grrrr.... Willis Towers Watson...

artyboy

WTW might be familiar to you as they are administrators for many occupational pension schemes. Specifically, they administered the scheme for my last employer, and I've got a sizeable amount that I want to move out.

"Glacial" doesn't even begin to cut it in describing their pace. Not to mention how unnecessarily complicated they make everything - I requested a transfer out so I could be shot of them, and their response to me included 14 separate document attachments. Only 2 required any action. And one of those I had to pick through the bits that were needed with no guidance.

And I've done a fair few transfers in the past year, but this was the only one where the administrators insisted that I sent them a copy of my passport, so they knew it really was me making the request 

And now, 2 months on, they write to me saying that, as my receiving scheme (an II SIPP) contains "overseas investments", then I have to have a Pension Safeguarding Guidance session with MoneyHelper. Or sign yet another form to opt out.

Are these guys serious?? Firstly it's a cash transfer so it's not like the transfer is directly into anything 'overseas'. And secondly, I'd be surprised if ANY pension these days didn't have overseas investments within it. So on the off chance this is a real regulatory requirement, why didn't they include this information/opt out form in the initial pack they sent me??

As you can tell, this is a bit of a Friday morning rant, but this is just one of a number of issues I've had with WTW, and I can't wait to get shot of them 😡

SVaz

That sounds annoying, why did they need to know what investments you already hold in your Sipp?  

 I’ve just transferred an old pension with Aegon into my Sipp and it took less than a fortnight, even though Aegon had to sell my funds and insisted on sending paper transfer forms out instead of emailing them.  I was able to scan and email them to HL though and the cash was transferred very quickly.  

NoMore

DWP urged to address amber flag pension transfer 'woes' in upcoming review - Pensions Age Magazine

Yes its a known problem within the pension industry. Scam prevention rules require the pension provider to flag certain things, and one of them is 'overseas investments'. However its not very well defined and some firms are overzealous in their interpretation and is causing problems like you are experiencing.

dunstonh

NoMore said:

DWP urged to address amber flag pension transfer 'woes' in upcoming review - Pensions Age Magazine

Yes its a known problem within the pension industry. Scam prevention rules require the pension provider to flag certain things, and one of them is 'overseas investments'. However its not very well defined and some firms are overzealous in their interpretation and is causing problems like you are experiencing.

The retail pensions providers are using common sense and I haven't experienced any issues with them.  If its Origo to Origo then they know its safe.    Or if its a mainstream brand receiving it.      When you look back at the scams, there are certain brands that everyone in the industry knows were the homes to the dodgy stuff.

The problems appear to be with the professional administrators who are not applying any discretion and treat the rules as black and white despite the rules stating that they can use discretion.   

Overseas investments is the main catch with this, as mentioned.   Not the region you invest in but the domicile of the investment.    So, if a SIPP is the receiving scheme, that means it can offer investments that are domiciled outside of the UK (e.g. ETFs in Dublin).    So, the receiving scheme correctly states that it allows overseas investments then that triggers the assessment by the ceding scheme.   That assessment is where the discretion is meant to be used.   However, too many of the professional administrators are not using that discretion and automatically insist on a further phone call and then a referral to moneyhelper to warn the person about scams.

ian16527

I transferred my last occupational DC scheme last year, with Premier and it seems they are all paperwork heavy
They wanted to know what I was invested in and what I proposed to invest in for the same reason as above, I ticked the decline box for moneyhelper or pension wise, as it was going to Vanguard.

Marcon

artyboy said:

WTW might be familiar to you as they are administrators for many occupational pension schemes. Specifically, they administered the scheme for my last employer, and I've got a sizeable amount that I want to move out.

"Glacial" doesn't even begin to cut it in describing their pace. Not to mention how unnecessarily complicated they make everything - I requested a transfer out so I could be shot of them, and their response to me included 14 separate document attachments. Only 2 required any action. And one of those I had to pick through the bits that were needed with no guidance.

And I've done a fair few transfers in the past year, but this was the only one where the administrators insisted that I sent them a copy of my passport, so they knew it really was me making the request 

And now, 2 months on, they write to me saying that, as my receiving scheme (an II SIPP) contains "overseas investments", then I have to have a Pension Safeguarding Guidance session with MoneyHelper. Or sign yet another form to opt out.

Are these guys serious?? Firstly it's a cash transfer so it's not like the transfer is directly into anything 'overseas'. And secondly, I'd be surprised if ANY pension these days didn't have overseas investments within it. So on the off chance this is a real regulatory requirement, why didn't they include this information/opt out form in the initial pack they sent me??

As you can tell, this is a bit of a Friday morning rant, but this is just one of a number of issues I've had with WTW, and I can't wait to get shot of them 😡

They are following hopelessly heavy-handed and frankly plain daft regulations. They can't win. If they follow them, people like you (understandably) start raging; if they don't and something goes wrong, doubtless you'll be first in the queue for 'compensation'.

Get the paperwork completed and returned and don't waste your time ranting about something which isn't their fault.

ajg68

artyboy said:

WTW might be familiar to you as they are administrators for many occupational pension schemes. Specifically, they administered the scheme for my last employer, and I've got a sizeable amount that I want to move out.

"Glacial" doesn't even begin to cut it in describing their pace. Not to mention how unnecessarily complicated they make everything - I requested a transfer out so I could be shot of them, and their response to me included 14 separate document attachments. Only 2 required any action. And one of those I had to pick through the bits that were needed with no guidance.

And I've done a fair few transfers in the past year, but this was the only one where the administrators insisted that I sent them a copy of my passport, so they knew it really was me making the request 

And now, 2 months on, they write to me saying that, as my receiving scheme (an II SIPP) contains "overseas investments", then I have to have a Pension Safeguarding Guidance session with MoneyHelper. Or sign yet another form to opt out.

Are these guys serious?? Firstly it's a cash transfer so it's not like the transfer is directly into anything 'overseas'. And secondly, I'd be surprised if ANY pension these days didn't have overseas investments within it. So on the off chance this is a real regulatory requirement, why didn't they include this information/opt out form in the initial pack they sent me??

As you can tell, this is a bit of a Friday morning rant, but this is just one of a number of issues I've had with WTW, and I can't wait to get shot of them 😡

I also had an frustrating time when I transferred an old occupational scheme from WTW to Vanguard last year.

I had the initial 30 pages email of forms with no guidance, I called them and was told to ignore the email and that they had sent (some of) the bits I needed to fill out via snail mail. This was the start of a series of both email and snail mail requests where the requests for more information contradicted each other and I needed to work out which was the one they wanted a response to. They told me that all forms needed to be sent back to them via snail mail and not emailed, this then changed the following week when they were apparently happy with scanned forms via email. They also told me that I needed to deal with them directly and absolutely no information could come from Vanguard or any other 3rd party. This also was not entirely true.  

Marcon said:

Get the paperwork completed and returned and don't waste your time ranting about something which isn't their fault.

Whilst it is true that you just need to grin and bear it, what *is* their fault is their inconsistency, misleading information and tardiness.

SouthCoastBoy

I've got a wtw pension that I need to transfer at some point, already dreading it. Maybe I should start the process sooner rather than later.

SouthCoastBoy

Seems as if long transfer times for wtw are not a new thing, https://www.pensionsage.com/pa/Govt-calls-in-big-three-for-urgent-talks-over-transfer-times.php

artyboy

Marcon said:

artyboy said:

WTW might be familiar to you as they are administrators for many occupational pension schemes. Specifically, they administered the scheme for my last employer, and I've got a sizeable amount that I want to move out.

"Glacial" doesn't even begin to cut it in describing their pace. Not to mention how unnecessarily complicated they make everything - I requested a transfer out so I could be shot of them, and their response to me included 14 separate document attachments. Only 2 required any action. And one of those I had to pick through the bits that were needed with no guidance.

And I've done a fair few transfers in the past year, but this was the only one where the administrators insisted that I sent them a copy of my passport, so they knew it really was me making the request 

And now, 2 months on, they write to me saying that, as my receiving scheme (an II SIPP) contains "overseas investments", then I have to have a Pension Safeguarding Guidance session with MoneyHelper. Or sign yet another form to opt out.

Are these guys serious?? Firstly it's a cash transfer so it's not like the transfer is directly into anything 'overseas'. And secondly, I'd be surprised if ANY pension these days didn't have overseas investments within it. So on the off chance this is a real regulatory requirement, why didn't they include this information/opt out form in the initial pack they sent me??

As you can tell, this is a bit of a Friday morning rant, but this is just one of a number of issues I've had with WTW, and I can't wait to get shot of them 😡

They are following hopelessly heavy-handed and frankly plain daft regulations. They can't win. If they follow them, people like you (understandably) start raging; if they don't and something goes wrong, doubtless you'll be first in the queue for 'compensation'.

Get the paperwork completed and returned and don't waste your time ranting about something which isn't their fault.

D'you know Marcon... immediately after getting this off my chest, that's exactly what I did.

And then, because I can't help myself, I decided to revisit the documentation I previously completed. First thing, I should acknowledge that it was 'only' 12 attachments they sent me, not 14. So that's alright then.

But then I found it - the PensionWise opt out that I signed and sent back to them. Although of course it wasn't the same opt out that I got this time, because the new one came with a bunch of 'on my own head be it' warnings, plus pointing out that the transfer would be discretionary rather than statutory.

So, that's 2 opt outs for me now, they could I suppose have put the correct legalese in the first one, but why would they do that...? After all, it can't be more than 99.9% of transfers out that would require it...

Give me strength. Muppets...

dunstonh

SouthCoastBoy said:

I've got a wtw pension that I need to transfer at some point, already dreading it. Maybe I should start the process sooner rather than later.

If you have an administrator that is not using discretion then allow 6 months for the transfer to complete.

Not all administrators allow you to sign to waive away either the pensionwise or the moneyhelper meetings.  Some insist on both.