Time is of the essence

Mr Malone's response to my complaint relating to the failure of the Barclays team to administer the transfer of Paul's pension uses some creative temporal argument. I am not using the time is of the essence phrase here to denote any legal contractual obligation but in the way that many of us use it to recognise that certain actions in life demand swift responses.

Paul sent an email on 30th January 2016 advising that he had a terminal illness and that he had decided to transfer his pension fund to the UK Equitable Life, he explicitly requested that the necessary forms be sent to him. A few months earlier in 2015 his attempt to transfer had been frustrated by the Barclays team sending the wrong advice;

“I am only able to proceed with a transfer if the receiving scheme is a Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme”

This wrong advice was accompanied by an overseas transfer pack when my husband had specifically identified that he wished to transfer to the UK based Equitable Life..

He died never having had the opportunity to access the paperwork necessary for a transfer to a UK pension fund. He was desperate to complete the transfer because he knew how much we would lose if it failed. On 5 April he wrote;

"Maybe the forms could be emailed? We only have dial-up access and downloads from websites can sometimes be difficult."

He was wasting his time, which was precious because the Barclays team never answered that email, or many more that were sent.

All that the Barclays team advised when he asked for documents to be emailed to him or posted was that he could download everything necessary from their website;

“You can go online and view your benefits, update your personal details and get illustrations, including options such as a transfer value and early retirement illustrations. Visit

https://epa.towerswatson.com/doc/BCL/login.htm. log on and explore this facility…”

Mr Malone refers to this in his response when he skims over the impact of the 2015 failure to provide correct information and documentation;

“… an email from the Barclays team to your husband on 15 June 2015, in which the inclusion of an overseas transfer pack was explained, along with how your husband might obtain a UK transfer form.”

The explanation Malone refers to is clear indication that regardless of whatever a scheme member asks for the Barclays team will always send anyone with an overseas address an overseas transfer pack, accompanied by a statement that the only transfer they are entitled make is to is to an overseas scheme, a QROPS.

Malone seems comfortable with that. 

Not everyone would be. Incorrect advice and a failure to provide a member with the means to complete the paperwork might be viewed as an unnecessary hurdle, a deliberate impediment introduced to delay and frustrate the transfer.

Did Malone ever read what the Barclays team had written when he refers to “… how your husband might obtain a UK transfer form.”? Did he ever attempt to follow the advice from the Barclays team? If he did and he was successful in following their advice then somebody has made some big systems changes since April 2016. All that Paul and I could retrieve from the Barclays website for members in 2015 and again in 2016 was the following;

It's a poor quality screen print but the wording is, "A quotation could not be produced for you. Please contact us for a quotation."

This would seem to fit with Malone’s comment that Paul’s particular situation required a manual calculation by the Scheme Actuary. But if Malone knows the epa website would not service Paul's pension then why does he think that sending a scheme member on a fruitless visit to the website was offering anything at all? 

This was just another red herring, another hurdle to jump and Malone was fully aware.

In 2016 Paul wanted to be sure this second attempt would succeed and so he specifically asked for the relevant paperwork to be sent.

By this time typing was difficult for him because movement of his right arm and right leg had been affected by the brain tumour. He made a typo or two, unusual for a man who was usually so pedantic and precise in his communications, but did that really make it impossible for the Barclays team to understand the meaning? I don’t think so.

Even with such a specific request Barclays made sure that he failed.

In 2016 they sent a second set of incorrect paperwork and this time they delayed sending it for as long as possible. Because of course, by then Paul was close to death and the Barclays team knew this. Paul had exposed his vulnerability to the Barclays team.

Malone claims that the email Paul sent on 30 January was just lost. It disappeared without trace. He cannot provide any evidence as to where it was lost, or how it was lost and so he makes a determination in favour of his Barclays team. It was not their fault. It never arrived.

This determination is not surprising as we would expect bias in all his decisions.

His own description of the Barclays team presents a picture of an administration routinely providing sub-standard administration. He writes;

"It is clear from the information on file that questions were not answered on a number of occasions. Your husband initially enquired about the transfer value of his pension in 2015. On 8th June 2015, he made a number of enquiries to the Barclays team, one of which was regarding the need to obtain independent financial advice regarding the transfer. The Barclays team failed to address this question in their response on 15th June 2015, and had to be prompted by your husband to address it in a further email. Second, in an email sent on 26 March 2016, your husband asked for confirmation of the correct Barclays team email address, and also for confirmation that the email he had sent 30 January 2016 had been received by the Barclays team. In the Barclays team's response on 5 April 2016 neither question was answered."

Even with bias Malone cannot deny everything that failed within the Barclays team, but he does fail to mention the all important significant misinformation sent to team Matthews in 2015, that was sent for a second time in 2016. This was the misinformation about which I complained;

"I am only able to proceed with a transfer if the receiving scheme is a Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme (QROPS)"

When considering the follow-up email sent by my husband on 26 March 2016, (illustrated above) requesting confirmation that the 30 January email was received, Mr Malone fails to offer any explanation at all as to why neither of the questions were answered? It would have been simple to send a reply, just a few words to explain that they hadn’t received the first email sent in January and confirming which was the correct email address to use.

So what was their motivation for ignoring these two questions?

Had they actually received it? Were they themselves confused about which email address was correct?

Or were they just reluctant to make a clear unequivocal statement? Did they wish to retain full deniability?

We'll probably never know, but we do know that they received the information. From 26 March onwards the Barclays team were aware that a scheme member was dying from brain cancer and their response from that moment on was to do everything possible to frustrate the potential transfer of funds.

The Barclays team did more than just ignore the 26 March request for confirmation; on 4 April they sent a curious request for validation of identity. A request about which Mr Malone find nothing unusual and comments briefly,

"The Barclays team replied on 4 April 2016, asking for additional information to confirm your husband's identity, which he provided on 5 April 2016."

Although Malone uses the word replied it wasn't actually a reply, because a reply would have required some information relevant to the question being passed back to the member. The Barclays team merely offered a non-committal response to introduce what was in my opinion an unnecessary delay.

Malone found nothing at all strange about this communication, which he presumably considered to be an essential authenticity check. He then makes the claim that;

"On 6 April 2016 your husband again asked for a transfer pack to enable him to transfer to a UK pension arrangement."

Although he uses the phrase, "On 6 April 2016 your husband again asked for a transfer," it suited Mr Malone's response better to date the initial request as 6 April. He offers no rationale to support using this date, he admits the second email containing the request to transfer was received on 26 March. This email explicitly included a statement that Paul wished to have the relevant forms for a transfer to the UK Equitable Life sent to him.

Mr Malone goes on to explain that although the legislation requires transfer values to be provided within three months and that when it is necessary to refer the case to the Scheme Actuary, as in Paul's case, the Barclays team aim to provide a transfer value within 20 working days. Using the 6 April date he makes the claim that because the pack was despatched on 10 May it was a only 3 working days later than the target date. Using the actual date the Barclays team admitted the request was received, 26 March shows the service level to be considerably more than 3 working days outside the target.  

Malone’s “working days” and service level targets for turnaround was rather a painful reminder to me that for many services Barclays remains a 5 day week operation. Whereas for the whole of his working life as a systems programmer Paul's working week at Barclays was a 24/7 entity. 

When the computer systems fail nobody responsible goes home.

The Barclays team introduced a delay by what Malone refers to as, "... additional information to confirm your husband's identity."  Malone makes no mention here of the other pertinent information, "... I have a terminal illness." When advised that a member has a terminal illness would any reasonable person deliberately introduce a completely unnecessary delay while they undertook an identity check?

Would the man on the Clapham Omnibus assess the Barclays team action in this instance as sincere? Were they acting in good faith?

When the Barclays team received my husband's email on 26 March 2016 they knew they were dealing with a man in crisis, a man who was terminally ill. Their response, after delaying any reply or acknowledgement for 9 days was to then claim that his details needed to be verified.

Such a claim needs scrutiny before it can be accepted as a genuine authentication requirement.

My husband had addressed his email, "Dear Ms Bienko", a person with whom he had corresponded just 6 months earlier. Was this a name that the Barclays team could reasonably be expected to recognise? If Bienko had left the organisation had any effort been made to provide continuity of contact for members she had dealt with?

My husband was using the same email address that he had used for those 2015 communications with Ms Bienko, regarding a transfer to the UK based Equitable Life pension provider. Did anyone check the correspondence on file to ascertain whether the email came from an email address that could be verified?

My husband ended his email with his full name Paul Matthews, and included his Barclays staff number in the email header. Does Barclays have many scheme members with these two identifiers?

When the two items of identification, name and staff number, are considered in conjunction with the use of Ms Bienko's name and transmission from the same email address, and requesting the completion of an action that had been frustrated due to maladministration just a few months earlier was there any genuine reason to doubt the authenticity of the email author?

Or might a reasonable person believe this alleged verification to be another delaying tactic to frustrate the transfer? Malone was convinced it was necessary, I am not.

In section 1 of his investigation Mr Malone describes the target timeframe for an enquiry to be progressed, and he states that The Barclays Team only missed the target by 3 days. In fact if we count from 26 March, a date that Barclays admit they received the transfer request, they missed the target by 13 days.

In describing the service level by counting days, and manipulating the truth to shorten the failure from 13 days to just 3 days Malone offers us an insight into the culture of the corporate world he inhabits.  He makes reference to my husband's acute terminal brain cancer early on in his response but fails to give any consideration of this in his examination of the actions taken by the Barclays team.

How sad for Malone and the Barclays scheme members that nobody can respond quickly to an enquiry when a crisis occurs, that there is no recognition that for those who have a terminal illness time is of the essence. 

I am not using this phrase in the legal sense as it applies to contracts, but in the commonsense way that we understand it anytime we see another human in trouble. We all know that there are times in life when we must act swiftly to offer help. As a member of technical support Paul always gave the best response possible, tried his utmost to shorten down time for Barclays. He had the same attitud as a volunteer member of the local bushfire brigade, the state emergency services, and the Red Cross. Throughout his life he helped others when help was needed.

How fortunate for Barclays that my husband did respond on numerous occasions when there was a crisis within the systems that Barclays rely upon. How many times did he respond swiftly, leaving family life to attend a call-out, to fix systems upon which the banking industry depends? How many hours of weekend and night time did he spend getting the systems back running when there was an outage?

When time is of the essence we need people who will respond appropriately. The Barclays team just does not have them, and Mr Malone does not recognize that they should have them. This is a small pension problem for one widow, but a much greater social problem exists when we place the needs of the corporation above the needs of the individual. When we develop teams of people who are capable of deliberately ignoring the needs of a dying man. 

Willis Towers Watson and Barclays are together creating a problem for our society.