Do I have a valid complaint against pension provider?

Technosaurus

Hi all - my FIL died suddenly Sept 2025 but thankfully had everything 'sorted out': all pension beneficiaries specified, wills, etc. My wife is executor, we have had probate etc

However for some reason he had a very small pension pot (under £5k!) with Fidelity and the process has been long-winded. 16 page form to fill out, upload things online which wasn't a simple process, but it all got done and we have had emails confirming all in order. However this was all done back in October/November and nothing has been done since.

My wife has chased several times, with 20-30 minute wait times on the phone (callback not an option as she can't have her phone with her at work so has to do it on lunch breaks) and keeps getting fobbed off about "Trustees making their decision".

I've seen the beneficiary nomination form for myself and it's very clear that 100% goes to M-I-L, the amount is absolutely tiny compared to most pensions. They are now the last remaining institution of any kind (including 2 other pension providers) to finalise things - it's having a drain on my wife. I have told her to politely escalate through their complaints process but she isn't one to complain.

However I am... but do I have a valid complaint to make to them to pull their finger out, even though I'm technically nothing to do with it? I don't propose to go to war but my own experience of large companies is that complaints usually get things sorted without any bad blood.

(Not sure if it's relevant but I am actually a Fidelity customer as my much larger workplace pension is with them... their intransigence here is making me consider moving it as I wouldn't want my next of kin to have to hang about like this when the time comes!)

SiliconChip

It's not really the job of the executor to chase a pension as it's not part of the estate, is there any possibility your MIL could do this hereself, which would remove the need for your wife to have to handle inconvenient phone calls? 

MyRealNameToo

In many schemes expression of wishes forms are advisory not binding and ultimately the trustees of the scheme are the ones that make the decision. This is inevitably a bit of a double edge sword as it adds delay in straightforward cases but can save people who are poor at updating their forms as life moves on. 

This happened to an ex-boss, he died unexpectedly and it turned out he hadn't updated his expression of wishes which still named his ex-wife as the beneficiary despite having divorced 5 years ago and having remarried since. You can understand these things can be difficult, the trustees didnt know him personally, for obvious reasons couldn't ask his opinion and had two people claiming the money was due to them. 

Its likely Fidelity is only the administrators and therefore have no say on who its paid to. They can only ask and chase the trustees but most trustees are doing the role on top of their day job, some funds are very bad at keeping the list of trustees up to date and it can take time to find the right people, confirm they are the right people and then get them to come to an agreement. 

DavidT67

A large investment company such as Fidelity will be using professional pension trustees for their SIPP and other pension funds, not some random employee!  

Technosaurus

Thanks for the replies - it hadn't occurred to me that we can just get my MIL to do all the chasing, that advice alone is golden!!

I appreciate when things get 'thorny' that it can take a bit of time. But this is about as simple as it gets - all forms are up to date with a husband leaving the money to his wife of over 40 years. And as I say it's absolutely tiny in the grand scheme of things, I can't imagine Fidelity will want the costs of administering a piddly £5k pension pot when presumably they have billions under management.

My perception is that Fidelity are big players presumably dealing with thousands of trustees decisions on a daily basis, and should have processes in place to avoid it taking several months for such a basic (and indeed very low value) situation... The question still stands, is it worth me complaining even though I'm not technically anything to do with proceedings at all? Or will they just say it has to be my MIL/wife who raises the complaint?

BooJewels

My personal opinion is that it's not really that long since you sent in the forms - perhaps not long enough yet to warrant a complaint.  If one needs to be made, it's not really your place to do so.

I cashed in 3 penson pots of my late husband's - in each case he had an up to date expression of wishes with me specified and he'd rung them not long before he passed to ensure that all was in order.  Whilst they varied in the detail of their requirements from me to settle, directly proportionate to the sums involved, the one that required the very detailed form, with lists of family members with DOBs etc and then trustee approval, took something like 12 weeks to settle from them getting the forms. The first I knew of it was getting cheques in the post, with the letter explaining that my claim was successful.  

So I suspect that your MIL will simply get something similar in the post in the not too distant future.

MyRealNameToo

DavidT67 said:

A large investment company such as Fidelity will be using professional pension trustees for their SIPP and other pension funds, not some random employee!  

Where they are just administering a DC scheme it won't be them that set the trustees 

Technosaurus said:

My perception is that Fidelity are big players presumably dealing with thousands of trustees decisions on a daily basis, and should have processes in place to avoid it taking several months for such a basic (and indeed very low value) situation... The question still stands, is it worth me complaining even though I'm not technically anything to do with proceedings at all? Or will they just say it has to be my MIL/wife who raises the complaint?

In a previous life we were asked to provide a quote for a pension scheme who wanted to move to a buyout and to close the scheme. There were circa 30 members left in the scheme, none had vested their DB scheme pension, the average age was approximately 85 with the oldest being over 115. The average pension was circa £50 per year. The reality is many are probably dead, most are never going to claim but the pension cant close whilst the liability exists. 

My client was massive, managing a vast number of schemes but realistically how often do you think they were going to have to reach out to the trustees of this scheme on a monthly basis? The trustees weren't planning to exist for much longer but if their efforts to close the scheme failed how likely are they going to remember to tell us if the trustees changed? They'd probably tell the other administrator that was covering thousands of members but us who never contacts them? 

Technosaurus

Thanks @BooJewels - fair enough, valid points.

I think what has irked me is that we have "closed off" everything else, including two other much more sizeable pensions with 2 other providers, all his investments, savings accounts, had all tax rebates through... yet this weird tiny one still remains outstanding.

However @MyRealNameToo has outlined that there are potential logistical issues that I simply haven't considered. Will leave it for now...

BooJewels

I would suggest @Technosaurus that if the estate is almost completely cleared in around 4 months, that's pretty exceptionally good going. 

There always seems to be one little niggle that won't allow you to close it off completely - with my father's estate (already delayed a year or more because of Covid) it was paying some CGT (only even arose due to the aforementioned delay) - I sent the forms in and had worked out what was payable with them on the phone, it took them 8 months to validate it and give me a reference to pay (and only 6 days to do so) - and somehow had adjusted the figure by 80p!  With my aunt's estate it took them  over a year to decide that she'd been over paid her SP by a couple of weeks.

Markdavid1962

If you get no response in a month or two, try emailing the President of Fidelity UK   keith.metters@fil.com

Technosaurus

BooJewels said:

I would suggest @Technosaurus that if the estate is almost completely cleared in around 4 months, that's pretty exceptionally good going. 

There always seems to be one little niggle that won't allow you to close it off completely - with my father's estate (already delayed a year or more because of Covid) it was paying some CGT (only even arose due to the aforementioned delay) - I sent the forms in and had worked out what was payable with them on the phone, it took them 8 months to validate it and give me a reference to pay (and only 6 days to do so) - and somehow had adjusted the figure by 80p!  With my aunt's estate it took them  over a year to decide that she'd been over paid her SP by a couple of weeks.

Thanks @BooJewels - as I say we have been relatively fortunate in that my FIL was a very organised man and everything is going to his wife, there's no argument about a single penny!

Perhaps "closed off" was the wrong phrase, there are still a couple of things that are awaiting finalisation but that's all it is after various correspondence back and forth and generally get the impression it's all in hand, whereas with Fidelity it has moved at a much more glacial pace. I hadn't realised they might just be a front for a much more "old-school" pension waiting for Mr Mainwaring to finish his round of golf situation.

PS my "favourite" farce of the whole thing was paying off his Halifax/Lloyds credit card... he only used it for holidays and there was a couple of thousand balance from a holiday taken the month before he died (it was quite a sudden death) They wouldn't accept debit card payments over the phone, had to send us a letter with payment instructions... instructions were to send a cheque. Rang up to say we don't have a chequebook and asked for sort code and account number. Couldn't give out that out over the phone but instead sent that by letter which took 4 weeks to arrive... then wouldn't accept payments from other Lloyds group accounts so my wife had to route the payment through me as I'm with HSBC. Took about 8 weeks end to end, all for something we could have done over the phone on day one! Then the banks moan about bad debts!