DB pension delays - compensation/interest ?

Marcon

af1963 said:

Resurrecting this to provide an update with the (fairly acceptable, I think) conclusion of the saga ...

We raised a formal complaint with the pension administrators about the multiple delays and errors.  They stonewalled this and refused to offer any compensation at all, which we thought took a bit of brass neck when they'd delayed the pension payments by 18 months with their errors.

So we took it to the original employer's trustees through their internal dispute resolution procedure (IDRP).  Did it as suggested above in Marcon's post, by just stating the facts and the chronology without getting angry or emotional.  (It helped that we did in fact have a detailed record of all correspondence.)

It took them several more months to get there, but they accepted just about all our points of complaint and offered  interest on all the late payments ( not a great interest rate, but enough so that the value of the money actually received was enough to more than match inflation during the delay period ), plus a £1500 compensation payment from the administrators, falling between the ombudsman's "Serious" and "Severe" categories.

Like Doglegger above, we thought about pushing it to the ombudsman but decided against.  There comes a point that you just want it settled, and the offer was "good enough".

Thank you for updating. It's always interesting to know what happens, and very pleasing when the right thing is done! 

I wish more people who are suffering hopelessly poor administration would use their scheme's IDRP, not least so the trustees know what's going on.