The good, the bad and the ugly

The first is the passing of the Royal London One-Day Cup Final at Lords, the final act of the County Cricket season. This year, in light of the fact that my beloved Warwickshire were playing against Durham, I decided to attend.

Sadly, the Bears, playing in the all-pervading gloom that always seems to accompany the start of autumn, were beaten but I am happy to say my black mood was quickly lifted by meeting the great Geoffrey Boycott and subsequently being photographed with him (even my mother who is rarely impressed by the exploits of her eldest son was impressed).

The second is the wilting of my sunflowers that will have stood proudly on my balcony (garden) for the past six weeks beaming down like beacons at all and sundry that sail down the Thames, heading for the Thames Barrier and beyond. My dearly beloved 2014 sunflower family has finally bowed its head as autumn takes its grip. Goodbye sunflowers, hello winter pansies.

The third passing of summer is marked by a week’s mandatory decampment to Macon – Burgundy land – in order to walk and run, but mainly to eat fine food and drink fine wine with those I love and cherish.

So, on reflection, was summer 2014 a summer when love oozed from the pores of one who commentates on all financial matters?

Or was it yet another summer where all I seem to do in my writing is criticise financial services companies for their panopoly of failings in the same old embittered Prestridge fashion? I think it has been a summer where we have had good, bad and ugly.

By taking out an Aviva annuity, I was told that I would be buying certainty

I will leave the ‘good’ to last (always best to end on a high note) and start with the ‘ugly’. And no uglier financial document have I seen than the one that invaded my letterbox a couple of weeks ago from the mighty Aviva imploring me to fall in love with their annuities.

I presume I got the mailing because I once bought some home insurance from them, so they are aware of my age (55ish). Certainly, they have no idea of my pension arrangements (that flit between the adequate and inadequate).

The mailshot, featuring a robot complete with apron and hoover (presumably because Aviva’s generosity will enable me to replace my moody Filipino cleaner for a robotic one) reads like a propaganda sheet for annuities. Annuities good, everything else ugly, when in fact, as you well know, the mantra is: ‘annuities ugly and poor value, everything else good’.

By taking out an Aviva annuity, I was told that I would be buying certainty. I would be able to choose between fixed payments, income that rises by a fixed percentage each year and income increasing in line with that bugbear called inflation.

All fine but it’s what the mailshot left out that I found so ugly. Not one mention of my right to seek out the open market option nor the option to provide financial protection for a spouse.

And worst of all, no mention of the fact that I had a better than evens chance of being eligible for an enhanced annuity – an option Aviva provides. Apparently an annuity 60 per cent of retirees are likely to be eligible for resulting in a potential 40 per cent increase in income.

Most journalists of my age, I would hazard a guess, would be eligible for an enhanced annuity due to the unhealthy lifestyles they have led and continue to lead – dominated by long working hours, constant deadlines and a liking for good food, fine wine (usually in excess) and tobacco.

This ‘ugly’ mailshot spoilt my summer. It was designed to engineer annuity sales – and by implication profits for Aviva. It was not put together to enhance the lives of those who received it (mine currently awaits recycling).

Certainly, if an independent financial adviser had constructed such a misleading mailshot, they would now be under the regulator’s spotlight.

As for the ‘bad’ of the summer of 2014, I would point to the series of phonecalls I continue to receive from Lloyds/Halifax branch staff complaining about the pressure they are being put under to complete sales – often to the detriment of the customer.

I thought the FCA had stamped down on product mis-selling in bank branches. But seemingly not.

Of course, the mighty Lloyds financial combine refutes any allegations of mis-selling or that staff are being put under immense pressure to sell, but there can be no smoke without fire. And it is not just me that is receiving this information – my colleagues on The Daily Mail have reported being in receipt of similar allegations.

Ending on the ‘good’, nothing raised my spirits more this summer than receiving stellar customer service from my local Barclays branch on London’s Kensington High Street. I was so overcome by the quality of service provided that I wrote about it in The Mail on Sunday.

The result was a lovely email from the branch staff thanking me for making their week.

Let’s hope autumn 2014 is the season when finally financial ‘good’ prevails over financial ‘bad’ and financial ‘ugly’. Miracles do happen.

Jeff Prestridge is personal finance editor of the Mail on Sunday