A SAVER is urging other Aviva customers to check their pension after a “systems glitch” wiped £450,000 off the value of his retirement pot.
John Thompson, 62, who lives in Brighton, had been checking the value of his pension using the Aviva app on his phone.
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John, founder of website Journalism.co.uk said: “I have been saving into my pension for a few decades. So I keep an eye on it.”
John had expected the value to come up as around £500,000 but instead the app showed there was just under £48,000 in his pension pot.
The 62-year-old knew that had been a mistake – but was disgusted when he called the customer service line.
He said: “I was put through to a customer service assistant. I was a bit taken aback because when I told them what had happened they laughed.”
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It took a few hours for Aviva to fix the error and was told it was a ‘system glitch’.
The reduced value had been appearing while Aviva was re-calculating his charges.
When John went back to check his pension, it was showing it was worth £467,000.
“But that was still wrong,” said John.
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“I was told that was the transfer value, which is the amount Aviva would give me if I wanted to move my pension.”
“I have saved for many years, so I knew it was worth a lot, thankfully it all appears to be there now.”
John eventually found out his pension was worth £498,000.
How to complain about your pension
IF you think your pension has been undervalued, or the charges are wrong, speak to your pension provider first.
They have up to eight weeks to deal with your complaint.
You can also get help from the Pensions Ombudsman or the Financial Ombudsman’s Service.
If you think the law has been broken speak to either the Pensions Regulator if it’s your company or workplace pension, or the Financial Conduct Authority if it’s a personal or stakeholder pension.
All regulated financial products are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), so if your pension company goes bust you are now generally entitled to 100% of your savings.
The exceptions are if it was a so-called self-invested personal pension (SIPP) or if a firm gave you bad advice, which both have upper ceilings of £85,000 per firm in compensation.
The limits were raised on April 1, 2019 – up from £50,000.
Aviva has apologised for not letting John know they were carrying out the work and said it had logged his concerns as a complaint which it would escalate for further investigation.
John said: “My understanding was that Aviva has spent £60million or so on a software update.
“So if my pension had the wrong charges I wonder if others would have been affected as well.”
“I’m wondering if other people have had the wrong charges applied to their pension and know nothing about it.”
A spokesperson for Aviva said the incident was a one-off system error, and was not related to its software.
They said that ongoing product reviews meant some charges applied to John’s policy were higher than they should have been.
The spokesperson added: “Having identified this, we took immediate action to correct it.
“This meant that the figures were showing as incorrect when he logged into his account last week as we were in the process of updating his policy at the time. This was an isolated incident.
“We’ve spoken to Mr Thompson and apologised for the distress caused.
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“We’ve also assured him that this has now been fully resolved and the corrections have been applied to his account.
“We are writing to Mr Thompson to explain and have logged this as a formal complaint.”
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