An adviser has criticised Scottish Widows for "appalling" customer service for forcing a client to wait two months to take his tax free lump sum from his pension.
Phil Perry, partner at Cheshire-based Ark Financial Planning, said the delay has hampered his client's plans to buy a new house and ruined the relationship Scottish Widow's "great" broker consultant spend two years building with his firm.
The money has now been paid.
Scottish Widows has apologised for the delay, and said it was due to a rise in the volume of requests for pension consolidations ahead of the pension freedoms that came into force in April.
we have seen a rise in the volume of requests for pension consolidations, which has led to some cases where we haven't been able to process payments as quickly as we would like
Changes to T&Cs
Perry's complaints to the provider also led him to discover Scottish Widows has changed the terms of its service standards agreement to extend the time it has to pay customers their pension to 17 working days, a move Perry said the provider told him is due to the pension freedoms.
But even this extended limit has been breached in the case of Perry's client, and many others according to the adviser, who said he was told by someone in the complaints department at Scottish Widows that the provider is holding a crisis meeting to deal with the problem.
Perry said he fails to understand the delays for his client, which include waiting more than a month for the provider to consolidate their five pensions - which were all already with Scottish Widows.
He said he was told by Scottish Widows that poor communication with its parent Lloyds Bank, which was holding the monies, was to blame.
'Very sorry'
A Scottish Widows spokesperson said: "Like much of the industry we have seen a rise in the volume of requests for pension consolidations, which has led to some cases where we haven't been able to process payments as quickly as we would like.
"This particular situation was exacerbated by poor communication with Ark Financial and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to them and their client.
"Scottish Widows has invested heavily in preparing itself for pension freedoms and despite receiving an unprecedented volume of calls and requests in recent weeks the overall feedback we have had from customers and intermediaries has been positive.
"While we are aiming to credit customer accounts within seven working days, more complicated requests including pension transfers and consolidation will take longer to process."
