NPI drags feet on policy information requests
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NPI has failed to provide an IFA with retirement projections and requested policy information despite the original requests being made three months ago.
NPI is part of the Phoenix Group and includes the closed life funds of Pearl Assurance and London Life Linked Assurances. Plan Money contacted NPI on February 15 and March 1 regarding two policyholders it had recently taken on as new clients.
The firm requested information on charging and commission structures, fund information and retirement projections.
Plan Money included signed letters of authority but is yet to get all the information it asked for. Director Peter Chadborn says: “If the client pays an hourly rate they may feel disillusioned with the IFA’s service and if they pay a set cost, the firm is out of pocket. All because of poor provider service.”
A Phoenix Group spokeswoman says: “We apologise and will ensure the IFA gets an urgent response to any outstanding questions.”
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Readers' comments (1)
Julian Stevens | 20 May 2011 10:15 am
This is hardly worthy of a news article. Such dismal standards are endemic across the industry, as any IFA will duly attest. We recently requested a PP vesting package from Scottish Life and asked specifically about GAR's and any penalties for early vesting. All that was sent was just the bog-standard vesting package with no mention at all of the above two important issues. Whoever had dealt with our request had obviously made no effort to read it or, if they had, had simply not bothered to do anything but press a few buttons and bung out their standard package (anonymously, of course).
Most of the other life offices are no better. The ethos seems to be to deal with everything and anything as quickly as possible, just to get it off the desk, out of the way and out of mind. Most requests for full policy information require two or sometimes three attempts, each one involving a different person and not infrequently 20 minutes on the phone, most of which is spent listening to a tedious recorded message telling you how your call is important, how they're experiencing high call volumes, an agent will be with you as soon as possible, etc, etc. All rubbish, of course. And Pearl Assurance was always one of the worst.
Is it any wonder that so many of the trad. life offices are having difficulty attracting sustainable levels of new business?
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