Obligations of pension company

ChrisBristol88

HI, I have an old DB pension scheme and until recently I could use an app which gave me an instant CETV and pension forecast depending on my retirement age. I looked at it out of curiosity more than anything, but I am now only a few months from being able to draw on my pension if I wanted and thought I'd get updated figures.

The app no longer works. It turns out that the pension has been transferred to another company and they do not offer any instant valuations. They will offer a CETV (which I have requested) but only once in any 12 month period. They will not offer any payout forecast until 12 months before my retirement age. This seems unreasonable - how can I consider my pension options when I have no idea how much this pension is worth? And why are they only obliged to offer a CETV every 12 months? It feels like I am being denied information that I should be entitled to. 

Is this legitimate? 

Thanks

Dazed_and_C0nfused

ChrisBristol88 said:

HI, I have an old DB pension scheme and until recently I could use an app which gave me an instant CETV and pension forecast depending on my retirement age. I looked at it out of curiosity more than anything, but I am now only a few months from being able to draw on my pension if I wanted and thought I'd get updated figures.

The app no longer works. It turns out that the pension has been transferred to another company and they do not offer any instant valuations. They will offer a CETV (which I have requested) but only once in any 12 month period. They will not offer any payout forecast until 12 months before my retirement age. This seems unreasonable - how can I consider my pension options when I have no idea how much this pension is worth? And why are they only obliged to offer a CETV every 12 months? It feels like I am being denied information that I should be entitled to. 

Is this legitimate? 

Thanks

As far as the pension is concerned, what significant change do you think might have happened since you previously checked?

Flugelhorn

seem to remember the NHS scheme would only allow one statement a year and any more had to be paid for - lot of guessing went on! Also they wouldn't do the final calculations until you actually applied for the pension ...  they had an online total rewards system but that tended to be about 2 years out of date for practitioners. 

Comes down to using old records you can get an approximate figure / estimate and work from that - shouldn't be far out 

Marcon

ChrisBristol88 said:

HI, I have an old DB pension scheme and until recently I could use an app which gave me an instant CETV and pension forecast depending on my retirement age. I looked at it out of curiosity more than anything, but I am now only a few months from being able to draw on my pension if I wanted and thought I'd get updated figures.

The app no longer works. It turns out that the pension has been transferred to another company and they do not offer any instant valuations. They will offer a CETV (which I have requested) but only once in any 12 month period. They will not offer any payout forecast until 12 months before my retirement age. This seems unreasonable - how can I consider my pension options when I have no idea how much this pension is worth? And why are they only obliged to offer a CETV every 12 months? It feels like I am being denied information that I should be entitled to. 

Is this legitimate? 

Thanks

Perfectly legitimate albeit annoying!

DB schemes are only required to offer a (free) CETV once in any 12 month period. They can choose to offer one more often and can charge for doing so, but there are not required to do so.

It's not uncommon for schemes to decline to offer projections until quite close to retirement. Can you ask for an early retirement quote (which isn't the same thing, but should enable you to work out for yourself roughly what the pension might be at normal retirement age)?

Why do you think you need a CETV at all? What do you think it will tell you? 

dunstonh

The app no longer works. It turns out that the pension has been transferred to another company and they do not offer any instant valuations.

Some of these early CETV instant valuations were so inaccurate that they were worthless and they got pulled or replaced.

 They will offer a CETV (which I have requested) but only once in any 12 month period. They will not offer any payout forecast until 12 months before my retirement age. This seems unreasonable 

On the other hand, that is the typical norm.     There are not many that need a CETV at all let alone more than 1 per year.

- how can I consider my pension options when I have no idea how much this pension is worth?

What options?   The CETV has nothing to do with your retirement options.  It only has an importance if you transfer out of the DB scheme.  However, now that CETVs have halved from their peak and are back in their more typical ballpark, only around 1 in 10 people are suitable for transferring out of a DB scheme.

Is this legitimate? 

Absolutely, yes.

hyubh

ChrisBristol88 said:

HI, I have an old DB pension scheme and until recently I could use an app which gave me an instant CETV and pension forecast depending on my retirement age. I looked at it out of curiosity more than anything, but I am now only a few months from being able to draw on my pension if I wanted and thought I'd get updated figures.

The app no longer works. It turns out that the pension has been transferred to another company and they do not offer any instant valuations. They will offer a CETV (which I have requested) but only once in any 12 month period. They will not offer any payout forecast until 12 months before my retirement age. This seems unreasonable - how can I consider my pension options when I have no idea how much this pension is worth? And why are they only obliged to offer a CETV every 12 months? It feels like I am being denied information that I should be entitled to. 

Is this legitimate? 

Thanks

Pretty normal. When a third party administrator wins a new scheme, they usually implement it on their own software. This can take time, and what exactly is to be implemented (e.g. instant CETV quotations) might be subject to further negotiation with the trustees.

As Marcon notes, what you describe (one free CETV per year, no CETV if within a year of NRA) is the statutory minimum. However, the two things are different in nature - only one (free) CETV quotation per year is limiting information, whereas no CETV if within a year of NRA is saying no actual transfer out is possible within that timeframe. So I'd echo Marcon's questions to you on that score...

artyboy

OP - if your CETV is over £30k, I assume you are aware of the hoops you need to need to jump though in terms of expensive advice, in order to transfer out?

Cobbler_tone

Our scheme is one CETV per year and £300 per subsequent request in a 12 month period.
The projected pension is live and accurate.
I'm assuming you still have visibility of what the pension is worth on an annual basis? If so, you should be able to have a rough idea of the CETV based on your previous views, considering you said it was 'recent'. If 'recent' was years ago it will clearly be very different today.

dharm999

ChrisBristol88 said:

HI, I have an old DB pension scheme and until recently I could use an app which gave me an instant CETV and pension forecast depending on my retirement age. I looked at it out of curiosity more than anything, but I am now only a few months from being able to draw on my pension if I wanted and thought I'd get updated figures.

The app no longer works. It turns out that the pension has been transferred to another company and they do not offer any instant valuations. They will offer a CETV (which I have requested) but only once in any 12 month period. They will not offer any payout forecast until 12 months before my retirement age. This seems unreasonable - how can I consider my pension options when I have no idea how much this pension is worth? And why are they only obliged to offer a CETV every 12 months? It feels like I am being denied information that I should be entitled to. 

Is this legitimate? 

Thanks

I’m in a similar situation, except it was an online portal and not an app.  The scheme is going to L&G and admin was previously done by Barnett Waddingham.  The BW website gave me a rough CETV, but of more use was the annual value of the pension at retirement age.  I tracked the annual increases, so I had an idea of what pension to expect when I got to the pension retirement age.  Now that the admin is transferring, I don’t get a CETV or a forecast of what my pension will be, as BW have ‘switched off’ that functionality, and when I queried it, they said it was because of the transfer to L& G, and all that info would be provided by L&G, but BW couldn’t provide it anymore.  Suspect it was a case of someone getting nervous about providing that info in case it was wildly different to what L&G would provide.  It now just tells me what pension I was entitled to when I left the company I worked for, so completely out of date and not particularly helpful. 

Marcon

dharm999 said:

ChrisBristol88 said:

HI, I have an old DB pension scheme and until recently I could use an app which gave me an instant CETV and pension forecast depending on my retirement age. I looked at it out of curiosity more than anything, but I am now only a few months from being able to draw on my pension if I wanted and thought I'd get updated figures.

The app no longer works. It turns out that the pension has been transferred to another company and they do not offer any instant valuations. They will offer a CETV (which I have requested) but only once in any 12 month period. They will not offer any payout forecast until 12 months before my retirement age. This seems unreasonable - how can I consider my pension options when I have no idea how much this pension is worth? And why are they only obliged to offer a CETV every 12 months? It feels like I am being denied information that I should be entitled to. 

Is this legitimate? 

Thanks

I’m in a similar situation, except it was an online portal and not an app.  The scheme is going to L&G and admin was previously done by Barnett Waddingham.  The BW website gave me a rough CETV, but of more use was the annual value of the pension at retirement age.  I tracked the annual increases, so I had an idea of what pension to expect when I got to the pension retirement age.  Now that the admin is transferring, I don’t get a CETV or a forecast of what my pension will be, as BW have ‘switched off’ that functionality, and when I queried it, they said it was because of the transfer to L& G, and all that info would be provided by L&G, but BW couldn’t provide it anymore.  Suspect it was a case of someone getting nervous about providing that info in case it was wildly different to what L&G would provide.  It now just tells me what pension I was entitled to when I left the company I worked for, so completely out of date and not particularly helpful. 

Just to be clear - it's not the decision of the administrators. It is for the trustees of the scheme to decide what information will be provided to members and in what format, subject to any statutory requirements.

Once a buy out/wind up has taken place, the decision passes to the buy out provider. 

Tommyjw

Indeed we have a whole team of coders etc ready to get a DB Scheme up and running online to run pension projections, all we are waiting is for the Trustee's to decide to pay for it, my experience is admittedly overwhelmingly with 'small' Schemes (less than 5000 members) and they are very reultant to pay for it