Are you Happy with your Standard Life Pension?
- Do you believe your Standard Life Pension will provide enough income to you and/or your loved-one’s during your retirement?
- Were you asked if you had any existing medical conditions at the time you took your Standard Life Pension?
- Were you advised fully about your Standard LifePension, including terms and conditions, any exclusions, small print or any potential financial shortfalls?
- Were you advised of any potential risks with your Standard Life pension?
- Were you asked about your attitude or views towards risk with your Standard Life pension?
- Were you advised about the many different pensions available to you, i.e. SIPS, annuities, final salary, defined contribution, personal pension?
- Were you advised there may be a more suitable pension for you elsewhere?
- Were you given the opportunity to look elsewhere?
If you answered no to any of the above, you may have been mis-sold your Standard Life pension and you may wish to make a complaint and seek financial compensation for any potential loss or mis-sale.
Is your Pension performing as it should?
The best way to assess whether your pension is performing as it should is to regularly check your pension statements that you should receive each year.
From those statements you should be able to compare if your pension funds are performing as they should. If your pension is not performing as well as it should, this may impact your pension funds in retirement significantly.
Could my Pension have been mis-sold?
Your pension could have been mis-sold. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has been looking very closely at all pension schemes and the advice given to customers by pension advisers as there has been concern that these have been increasingly mis-sold.
Your pension could have been mis-sold if you were not asked about any existing medical conditions. These can range from being obese, having high blood pressure, being a smoker, to other recognised untreatable medical conditions.
The reason mis-sale occurs around this issue is that someone who has an existing medical condition, or is a smoker, is expected to have a lower life expectancy than that of someone who is healthy and does not smoke or have any underlying health conditions.
The pension provider would be expected to top-up the pension fund payments and increase it to reflect the lower life expectancy upon retirement. This is an area where major mis-sales are likely to have taken place.
Will a mis-sold Pension affect my retirement?
As above, if your pension was mis-sold it could significantly impact upon your retirement.
It could leave you with less money to live on per week, month, year, which could directly impact upon your dependents and loved-one’s.
It may also affect your opportunity to have the quality of life upon retirement that you desire or wish to have.
Can any Pension be mis-sold?
Not all pensions are mis-sold.
If your adviser fully explained the available pension options to you, and fully advised you of all terms and conditions, any exclusions, and advised you how existing medical conditions may impact on your pension fund, then you are not likely to have been mis-sold your pension.
However, if none of the above, or only parts of the above were discussed with you, or you felt forced to take a particular pension by Standard Life, or any other provider, then you may wish to make a complaint to the provider first to address any issues or concerns you may have and address any potential compensation for the mis-sale.
If you do not feel confident, or do not know where to start with questioning whether you have been mis-sold a pension with Standard Life, or any other pension provider, we would be very happy to help you with this.
We would make enquiries on your behalf, all on a ‘No Win, No Fee’ basis. You would only pay in the event we are successful in recovering financial recompense for you and, in that event, we would charge 24% inclusive of VAT.