Your money was invested in a with-profits fund, which is where your pension is pooled with other investors’ money and held in a mixture of shares, bonds, property and other investments.
With-profits funds are designed to be less volatile than other types, but the value of your pension will depend on the underlying performance of the assets. Over the years doing this column, I have been beset with complaints about the poor performance of with-profits funds.
However, I can confirm that in your case your fund has in fact performed even better than you or your adviser had realised. The true value of the fund is £352,000, which Scottish Widows has acknowledged for the first time in writing.
I understand that your pension value was not officially updated on the system due to a “computer error”, which led to your financial adviser receiving incorrect written valuations. Scottish Widows has also apologised for delaying the transfer out to the wealth adviser and will compensate you for any lost interest or investment returns as a result of the delays.
A Scottish Widows spokesman said: “We’re sorry for the time it has taken to sort out Ms H’s pension valuation and transfer. We’ve spoken to her and contacted her adviser to apologise for not getting it right the first time and are arranging a payment to acknowledge this, as well as making sure she is not out of pocket as a result.”
