Financial institutions are back in the news yet again, and all for the wrong reasons. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has sent shockwaves around financial markets worldwide. Fortunately the damage in the UK was limited. HSBC snapped up the SV Bank's British subsidiary allowing investors to get access to their money. If only Scottish Widows (SW) could allow the same.
SW used to be one of the most respectable financial institutions in the country. And then it was bought up by Lloyds Group. For many years, it continued to work well. For the past year or so however it has gone into meltdown. It's customer relations are at best shambolic and if you are expecting to get your pension or savings policy out of them, there are delays running to months. Try phoning them and you can often wait over an hour to get through. Then you discover they have lost documents or they send the wrong documents to customers. It is thought that up to 10,000 customers have money trapped in SW.
There is a support group on Facebook on which customers have posted about their problem with SW. It all makes terrible reading for SW. People can't get to their savings to pay for partners/family members in residential care. Relatives of people who have passed away cannot get access to pensions and policies to pay for funerals. Pension funds are supposed to be paid within a few days of a claim being lodged. Thousands of claimants are waiting months rather than days.
When my brother Andrew died, we lodged a claim on his pension with SW and was accepted. 9 months later and SW have still not paid up. So I can speak from personal experience on how appalling the service is at Scottish Widows. This company must be one of the worst run in the country but why on earth are Lloyds Group allowing one of their subsidiaries to behave in such an appalling manner?
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