Personal PensionJun 15 2015

Nutmeg shocked at up to 90 day pension transfer times

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Nutmeg shocked at up to 90 day pension transfer times

Since starting up its own personal pension plan in February, online investment manager Nutmeg has been “shocked” by some of the waiting times experienced by consumers wanting to transfer over from more legacy providers.

Of the first 500 completed pension transfers into Nutmeg - completed between the start of January and end of May from more than 35 different providers - the quickest average completion time was 11 days from St James’s Place and the longest average was 93 days from UBS. On average, transfers have taken 21 days to completion.

Full details off the times to transfer are detailed in the table below:

FirmNumber of days taken to transfer
St James’s Place11
Clerical Medical Investment Group 13
Investment Funds Direct 13
Scottish Widows14
Old Mutual 14
Hargreaves Lansdown 14
Aviva15
Reassure UK15
James Hay15
Standard Life 15
Canada Life 15
Aegon/Scottish Equitable 16
Skandia Life 17
Friends Life 18
Legal and General 19
Sun Life Financial 20
Axa Wealth Elevate 20
Royal London Mutual Insurance Society24
Scottish Life

24

A J Bell25
Prudential26
Halifax27
Fidelity Investments33
Alliance Trust33
Clerical Medical Investment Group (Stakeholder)

34

Transact

37

National Provident

37

Prudential Assurance38
Other (only one transfer from a ceding scheme)

42

Phoenix Life taking 43
Zurich Assurance 50
Virgin Money51
HSBC60
Lloyds/TSB79
UBS93

Source: Nutmeg

Nutmeg chief executive Nick Hungerford explained that not all of the industry operates online and they are still dealing with transfers from companies where the preferred method of communication is the fax machine.

“We have been shocked by how long some pension transfers take. Aside from the frustration this causes the customer it also means that their investments could be out of the market for a prolonged period of time.”

He stressed that these long wait times meant that money could be out of market during that time and customers could miss out on potential returns.

peter.walker@ft.com