Dear Mr White
Mr Malone’s findings
of IDRP Stage 1 notified to me 13th September 2016
I am writing to request
reconsideration of my complaint as I reject the conclusion detailed in
Mr Malone’s letter which included some creative temporal adjustments and much
unsupported speculation. Full details of my disagreement with the content of
his letter are attached and if you require further explanation or information
please contact me by email. The devil is in the detail and I urge you to read
it.
As you read this catalogue of errors
bear in mind that it is not only Mrs Matthews who has suffered a financial
loss, every pension scheme member is paying the price for poor quality
administration. Administration costs are significant, and dealing with service
requests multiple times is expensive. The old maxims of 'right first time' and 'zero
tolerance' might sound like clichés but they return benefits to
organisations who can deliver.
The main point I wish to raise with
you is that at no time did my husband express any desire to transfer his
Barclays pension to an overseas institution. In 2015 my husband requested a
transfer to UK Equitable Life. He was sent the wrong transfer pack, accompanied
by the false and misleading statement;
"I am only able to proceed with a transfer if the receiving
scheme is a Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Scheme (QROPS)"
This 2015 date was when the Barclays
team at Willis Towers Watson set in motion a catalogue of errors imposing
unnecessary hurdles and impediments to frustrate the completion of a proposed transfer
to the UK based Equitable Life pension provider. The transfer was not a
statutory right but in 2015 we had no reason to doubt that it was an offer made
in good faith by the Barclays Pension
Fund Trustee.
If the correct paperwork had been
sent when it was requested in 2015 my husband would have had ample time to
complete before his death in April 2016. If the Trustee offer of a transfer was
made in good faith then they would surely
not wish my husband’s acceptance to be frustrated by the multiple points of failure
he experienced.
Fiction can begin at any point the
author chooses, non-fiction reports on actual events cannot. Mr Malone
embarks upon speculation as to what might have happened in 2016 but nowhere
within his response does he speculate as to what might have happened if the
Barclays team had sent the correct information accompanied by the correct
paperwork in 2015.
The 2015 administration failure was
the primary complaint in my letter dated 16th May 2016, the fact that a repeat
failure occurred in 2016 just made the whole experience unbearable.
I do not need to speculate about how
we might have acted in 2015 if my husband had been provided with the necessary
paperwork, and had not been required to deal with the misinformation informing
him that only an overseas pension provider was acceptable, and further
misinformation that he could access information online. Given the means to accept the Trustee offer in
2015 he would have had ample time to complete before that offer expired.
Furthermore, Mr Malone does not
speculate as to how the events of 2016 might have developed if the Barclays
team had shown any humanity towards a dying scheme member. If they had
attempted actions to expedite the transfer, to fast track it because they were
aware that it was incorrect advice
and documents provided by the Barclays team that frustrated the completion just
a few months earlier. They knew that Paul was a dying man and they did nothing
to help him.
In writing his speculative piece Mr
Malone can only imagine a world where the Matthews family have no connections
or relationships with IFAs, where an IFA would need a significant lead time to
compete the paperwork, and every action by the Barclays team must take the
maximum number of days allowed within service levels.
As a widow I have been dealing with a
number of institutions over the past months and I can assure you that the
Barclays team performance falls far short of the service that other decent
administration teams provide. In other companies a dying man and his widow are
treated with some compassion, given a dedicated single point of contact to
assist throughout the sometimes difficult period of resolving financial
matters. I hope that you will find the time to listen to the recording of the
telephone call I made to the Barclays team on 28 April 2016. When you do I hope
you will consider how you would feel if your mother, your wife or some other
person you cared about was making such a call. I would appreciate a copy of
that recording for my records, emailed as an mp3 will suffice.
Mr Malone makes much of the
involvement of the Scheme Actuary, indicating that this manual intervention
made any swift transactions impossible. The Scheme Actuary may have worked
diligently for approx 41 elapsed days to complete the valuation but I dispute
the accuracy of the figures produced. I am not an actuary but whereas Mr Malone
apparently sees nothing wrong with the resulting figures, they baffle me. Why
has the Scheme Actuary adjusted the guaranteed element? The total annual
pension payable dropped from £4,444.20 in 2015 to just £1,745.07
in 2016. This must surely hint at the possibility that the scheme is being
administered in a somewhat more reckless and haphazard manner than the members
might expect or deserve.
Pensions represent a significant
proportion of the assets acquired by working class people such as the Matthews
partnership. If my husband had transferred to a competitive UK pension provider
I would now be in a position to inherit a tax free lump sum, and enjoy a small
annuity to represent the GMP if, in fact this was an essential element of any
new arrangement. We were denied the opportunity to exercise choice in how my
husband's pension monies were used, and as a result he suffered unnecessary
stress and worry and I now suffer a financial loss. Throughout our life
together we worked and saved hard for security in retirement. Paul did not draw
on any of his company pensions; we lived simply on my Abbey Life pension
supplemented by the state provisions, always hoping that there would be changes
to offer greater pension freedoms. When the pension freedoms were implemented
Paul acted, but his efforts were thwarted by the Barclays team.
During my career with Abbey Life I witnessed
some appalling deliberate actions within administration teams supporting the
commission only sales force during the peak years for mis-selling. Typically
these involved similar obfuscation and manipulation of the truth as ‘the
Barclays team’ have engaged in. The primary concern then was to confuse clients so that management could retain deniability. However, nothing previously
witnessed compares to the performance of ‘the Barclays team’ when dealing with
a dying man, and for Mr Malone to shrug off my criticism as of no consequence
reveals a culture that needs some close attention. I admit that initially my
criticism was directed at Willis Towers Watson. Having now experienced
efficient service from the JPMC team at Willis Towers Watson I believe the
culture within the Barclays team must be owned by Barclays alone.
If the Barclays Trustee made the
offer of a transfer in good faith
then they need to be aware that the acceptance of that offer was only
frustrated due to the actions of their own administration team. Paul had the
motivation and intent to transfer but was denied the means. I look forward to
your response in due course and would appreciate an email acknowledgement
that you have received this. Please advise if you also require a paper copy to
be posted.
Yours sincerely
Heather Matthews
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