Who to escalate pension complaint to?

artyboy

Morning all,

I need to get some traction on a formal complaint that I raised with my former workplace pensions administrator (yes... WTW again). 

The complaint was made over 9 weeks ago, and to date I've only had holding responses along the lines of "we are investigating". I believe that as it's been over 8 weeks and I've had no substantive response, I'm able to escalate this - and I think it would be to the Pensions Ombudsman - but there appear to be multiple bodies that investigate different concerns or complaints about pensions, so I'd appreciate if anyone could confirm this for me?

If it's relevant, the nature of the complaint is that my final payment (out of my redundancy settlement) was applied a month later than it should have been, and the resulting market movement has left me about £1000 worse off (although that's a constantly moving figure so my complaint focuses on the delta in the number of fund units I received).

I have a nasty suspicion that WTW will try and put the blame on my ex-employer for being late in sending the funds across, but right now I just want them to give me their response. Not least because I'm in the process of transferring out just to get away from WTW once and for all.

thanks
Arty

Marcon

artyboy said:

Morning all,

I need to get some traction on a formal complaint that I raised with my former workplace pensions administrator (yes... WTW again). 

The complaint was made over 9 weeks ago, and to date I've only had holding responses along the lines of "we are investigating". I believe that as it's been over 8 weeks and I've had no substantive response, I'm able to escalate this - and I think it would be to the Pensions Ombudsman - but there appear to be multiple bodies that investigate different concerns or complaints about pensions, so I'd appreciate if anyone could confirm this for me?

If it's relevant, the nature of the complaint is that my final payment (out of my redundancy settlement) was applied a month later than it should have been, and the resulting market movement has left me about £1000 worse off (although that's a constantly moving figure so my complaint focuses on the delta in the number of fund units I received).

I have a nasty suspicion that WTW will try and put the blame on my ex-employer for being late in sending the funds across, but right now I just want them to give me their response. Not least because I'm in the process of transferring out just to get away from WTW once and for all.

thanks
Arty

If that was the case, then you can't blame the administrators, especially as they might not even have known the payment was expected.

The Pensions Ombudsman is the correct one (because you are complaining about maladministration), but have you actually checked with your former employer when they sent the funds over? WTW may be having trouble getting an answer to the same question, which would be a perfectly reasonable explanation for the delay.

artyboy

Yes I have Marcon, but all I can say is that they give WTW a run for their money in terms of efficiency. In other words, no answers there yet.

But there is at least an official channel for me to complain through the pension I still hold, so that's where I have to focus my efforts right now.