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:
Firm | Number of days taken to transfer |
St James’s Place | 11 |
Clerical Medical Investment Group | 13 |
Investment Funds Direct | 13 |
Scottish Widows | 14 |
Old Mutual | 14 |
Hargreaves Lansdown | 14 |
Aviva | 15 |
Reassure UK | 15 |
James Hay | 15 |
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 Society | 24 |
Scottish Life | 24 |
A J Bell | 25 |
Prudential | 26 |
Halifax | 27 |
Fidelity Investments | 33 |
Alliance Trust | 33 |
Clerical Medical Investment Group (Stakeholder) | 34 |
Transact | 37 |
National Provident | 37 |
Prudential Assurance | 38 |
Other (only one transfer from a ceding scheme) | 42 |
Phoenix Life taking | 43 |
Zurich Assurance | 50 |
Virgin Money | 51 |
HSBC | 60 |
Lloyds/TSB | 79 |
UBS | 93 |
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