Contemporaneous Notes

What do we mean by a contemporaneous note, and why do they matter so much when we are investigating? Contemporaneous notes are written at the time or immediately after an event, action or decision occurs. There are many reasons why contemporaneous notes are important but here are just two;

The fallibility of human memory.

We can not only forget things completely but we can have our memories distorted by subsequent events. The language that is used to describe events can shape our memories, as can emotions, fear of recrimination and a whole host of other factors.
I read a note recently about the manner in which a telephone was slammed down to end the call. This was an entirely false representation of what happened, the telephone in question was a modern instrument that just had a button pressed to disconnect the call, but when words such as slammed down enter our minds we generate an internal representation of a telephone call that was angry, unpleasant and acrimonious, rather than a call that could only have been perceived as ending a little more abruptly than expected.

The Integrity of any Future Investigation.

We can rarely anticipate when a sequence of events will need to be investigated. Most investigations result from a problem, some arise as a routine audit examination but these will not be announced in advance. If a problem is identified and then information is requested the person being interviewed has an opportunity to shape their response, tailor it to minimise their liability, reduce any accountability For this reason the routine production of contemporaneous notes is vital if any investigations or quality control is to proceed with confidence.

Do the Barclays team at Willis Towers Watson record contemporaneous notes for every administration event? I doubt that I will ever know. They certainly weren't sharing information with Paul back in March when he made contact with them to enquire as to whether they had received an email sent in January 2016.

He had received no acknowledgement in response to an email sent in January.

Some of you will understand that throughout February Paul was in Perth, and I was driving the 4.5 hours each way to visit him and return to care for the sheep, chickens and fruit trees while the state experienced one of the hottest periods on record, reaching 46 degrees at one stage.

In March we were together again and back home. Paul was desperate to ensure that the pension transfer was progressing.

The email address was double checked with the Willis Towers Watson literature and an anomaly was noticed. In the pensions booklet two email addresses were shown. We were concerned that we had heard nothing and so the email was re-submitted to both of the published email addresses.

This email sought confirmation that the earlier communication was being attended to;

"Please confirm this email was received - not sure which email to use"

No confirmation or denial was ever received until last week when Mr Malone wrote to me in response to my formal complaint.

In Mr Malone's detailed description of his investigation into the shambolic administration of Paul's pension he writes;

"On 30 January 2016 it appears that your husband emailed the Barclays team, notifying them that he wished to transfer his UKRF benefits to another UK pension arrangement and requesting the relevant forms. Your husband also explained in this email that he had acute terminal brain cancer. Regrettably, the Barclays team did not receive this email, and so the request for the relevant paperwork was not actioned, nor was his request for access to the online Barclays sites. The Barclays team have investigated this aspect and have confirmed to me that this email was never received and they have been unable to determine why."

Pause for a moment and consider how useful it would be if the Barclays team could have immediately referred Mr Malone to an email sent by them in March in response to Paul's request for confirmation. Did Malone ask them whether they had done this? Maybe, but if he did he isn't telling me how they answered.

Probably because the no such email was ever sent. I'll explain more clearly what was sent in another post.

The man with an acute terminal cancer was left wondering if he would ever be able to make contact with the Barclays team. Apparently when they received the re-submitted email, clearly showing that this terminally ill man had transmitted it in January they made no attempt to investigate why it had not been received, nor did they notify him by way of a contemporaneous note.

Months after the event, when the aggrieved widow had lodged a formal complaint the Barclays team have chosen to confirm to the investigator, Mr Malone that the email was never received. Mandy Rice Davies Applies (MRDA) 

Mr Malone continues his explanation of this allegedly missing email thus;

"While the Barclays team email address had changed shortly before, the old email address, which your husband appears to have used, was still active. Further, there were no reported system outages at that time and the Barclays team have not been made aware of any other emails which were sent at a similar time by other members, but not received."

Who does he think would report "system outages"?

Did the Barclays team report this missing email to Technical Support in March? He doesn't make this clear, but the absence of reference to dated evidence that a report was made to the technical staff responsible for communications suggests that they did not. I would expect him to record within his report the date, time and reference of a technical incident report if the failure had been reported.

Anyone who has ever worked within an IT department knows that the, "nobody else has complained" excuse just doesn't suffice.

Consider for a moment how many widows would just accept what the pension fund offered them? Widows are grieving, some will have experienced some very tough years caring for a loved one. Apologies for being sexist here but a high percentage of women in my generation did not develop any great financial literacy. There are still many wives, and husbands too who do involve themselves deeply in investment and financial planning decisions. The majority of pension fund members do not have wives who are not only actively involved in the detail but have also had a career in financial services.

Malone continues;

"In the absence of evidence that

 (i) there were system errors on the part of the Barclays team at the time and/or

(ii) that the email was successfully sent, I cannot hold the Barclays team accountable for a failure to receive the email, as it may be that there was an error in the transmission of this email from your husband's account."

Malone has a law degree and so maybe he's looking for evidence beyond all reasonable doubt? But if we consider the balance of probability, which ought to serve for this purpose as we aren't sending anyone to jail over this, then my response would be;

"In the absence of any contemporaneous advice being sent in response to my husband's request for confirmation that his email had been received, and the significant number of errors that Mr Malone has identified and reported on the probability is that this email was merely being ignored and when the follow-up was sent the Barclays team were too embarrassed to confirm the situation preferring to retain deniability. Furthermore, it did not require a system error to lose or just ignore a member's communication. None of the communications we have exchanged with the Barclays team have ever been complete and satisfactory. If Mr Malone read through his own report of the investigation he would surely recognise that any reasonable person would rate the integrity of the Barclays team administration as not merely in the category of a could try harder but as an outright fail."

If the Barclays team had not received the January email why did they not very swiftly say so in March when they received a request for confirmation? 

Why no contemporaneous record?