Clerical Medical - Extremely Poor Service

xylophone

I suspect an IFA would find out within 30 minutes what the issue is

The total value of the pension seems to be under £80,000 so that unless this plan has safeguarded benefits (there is no indication that it 

does),  the OP should not need to consult an IFA?

It seems to me quite unacceptable that CM cannot provide a clear explanation in writing of the options offered under the policy they wrote.

dunstonh

The total value of the pension seems to be under £80,000 so that unless this plan has safeguarded benefits (there is no indication that it 
does),  the OP should not need to consult an IFA?

If there are no safeguarded benefits than an IFA is not required.   However, after the hassles and still none the wiser, then maybe a bit of support was needed.       Maybe there are safeguarded benefits and that is the hold up?    

It seems to me quite unacceptable that CM cannot provide a clear explanation in writing of the options offered under the policy they wrote.

I have never had a problem getting it in writing (as expected, as providers know that IFAs need the audit trail).   SW's service has not been great for a while but as it stands, it should be pretty easy for someone that knows what they are doing to understand what the issue is.   At the moment, slpierce either doesn't know the issue or doesn't understand the issue or isn't relaying the issue to us.  Couple that with expectations that are unlikely (e.g. a legacy plan supporting crystallised benefits) along with SW's in-house sales team not having access to CM policy details directly, then you have the potential for a whole range of mix-ups and misunderstandings.   

slpierce

Update on my issues, and for the record the pension value was around £78000 last week, I checked it on my Lloyds online banking home screen, and It has around 4500 units in Balanced Pen and around 1500 units in UK Growth Pen.

I have a new complaints person handling my problems, and things now seem to be moving along, he sent me a list of fund to transfer my pot into, I specifically asked if the fund I chose would be eligible for flexi access he told me via email and I quote "the monies will automatically go into flexi drawdown"

Today I noticed my pension account on my Lloyds banking home screen had disappeared, hopefully this is a sign that something is actually happening.

slpierce

Final Update.

After several more weeks my issues were finally sorted out by a very helpful complaints manager, I have received my TFC, and the rest of the fund has gone into a flexi access drawdown policy, I also received some compensation, and an interest payment because of the delays.

essexgirl1955

Revisiting the Clerical Medical thread, I see this online today:
"In effect Clerical Medical no longer exists as a stand-alone brand. With Profit policies are managed under this umbrella arrangement with Lloyds Bank." Perhaps they just haven't gotten around to updating their letterhead? Because every scrap of communication I ever got from CM said 'Clerical Medical' on it quite clearly, and that's enough for me. All I can say is that I now have a pretty dim view of Lloyds Bank if they allow this crass inefficiency to operate under their management. 

Anyway, I did get my 25% eventually, and as it 'only' took a year, I guess I should be grateful? The other 75% went into a SIPP where it seems happy. 

After I registered my complaint CM sent me a check for 200 quid, and asked me if everything was OK now? I basically said "No, I was hoping some action might be taken so that other people don't have to go through this fiasco." So they sent me another check for 200 quid - and I've not heard anything since! Has it improved?

I'm just glad it's all over. Looked at from this distance (roughly 5000 miles away) I'd just like to add that my husband and I find the UK state pension system to be a paragon of clear, efficient, appropriate and timely communication. (We both worked for years in the UK before emigrating, so get state pensions appropriate to our contributions.) They seem well able to deal with overseas recipients, of which they must have tens - if not hundreds - of thousands. 

dunstonh

Revisiting the Clerical Medical thread, I see this online today:
"In effect Clerical Medical no longer exists as a stand-alone brand. With Profit policies are managed under this umbrella arrangement with Lloyds Bank." Perhaps they just haven't gotten around to updating their letterhead? Because every scrap of communication I ever got from CM said 'Clerical Medical' on it quite clearly, and that's enough for me. All I can say is that I now have a pretty dim view of Lloyds Bank if they allow this crass inefficiency to operate under their management. 

Thats been the case for about a decade.   Sometimes things turn up with SW letterhead, sometimes CM.  A lot of the forms were branded SW many years ago.  Yet others stayed as CM.    Its been at the same service centre for years.

If you look at my first post on this thread from 2023, I replied using SW rather than CM because of this.

Lloyds Bank has a history of taking on insurance companies and running them down.  Abbey Life & Hill Samual.  Then periodically, Lloyds will give it a big shot of funding to improve things and then appears to get bored again.  When Lloyds launched Black Horse Life, it had some good products (for the era) and the tech used by the staff was good.  But it never got improved or maintained and went downhill.   So, Lloyds can be very cyclical in how it deals with its subsidiaries.  Recently, Lloyds finally gave Scottish Widows a whole of market platform (by rebranding the Embark platform that used to be the Zurich platform).   They seem to be running updates and improvements on that given the emails I keep getting.      How long that will last will be interesting to see.