St James’s Place has been told to pay £500 compensation after a customer’s pension was mistakenly transferred to another provider causing him “stress and inconvenience”.
The client took his case to the Financial Ombudsman Service after the incident in the summer of 2023.
The complainant, called Mr P, became aware his funds had been moved to another provider in July 2023 despite him not authorising the transfer.
He came to understand this was to do with confusion around the account number but the funds were not returned to him for several weeks.
Mr P told the ombudsman he spent a lot of time contacting the firm to sort out the issue, much of which was while he was on holiday.
The report said the receiving provider was at fault but the ombudsman also said SJP should have done more to confirm the transfer request was in fact from Mr P.
The ombudsman’s report read: “SJP said after it had received a request to transfer Mr P’s pension funds it did query the account number as it wasn’t the same number that it held for his plan. But it did transfer the funds.
“It said that when Mr P called to question why his plan had been transferred it then told the new provider the instruction to transfer wasn’t from Mr P – and liaised with it to get the funds returned.
“As part of that process the investment returns that had occurred while the funds had been transferred away were then repaid to SJP and reinvested from the original date of disinvestment.”
For this reason it did not believe Mr P had suffered any investment losses.
However, Mr P was not satisfied with SJP’s response claiming his holiday was ruined by having to call up SJP to resolve the issue.
Mr P believed he should be offered £2,500 compensation for the stress and anxiety caused by the ordeal.
However, the ombudsman ruled £500 was reasonable in this case.
The ombudsman, Keith Lawrence, wrote: “I don’t take lightly the impact [the incident] would have had on Mr P and I can imagine the stress and concern he would have experienced being unsure of his funds whereabouts for that length of time.
“This was also impacted by Mr P being on a family holiday for some of the time and having to make calls which I can appreciate would have distracted him from events and taken up some of his time.
“Mr P feels that compensation around the cost of the holiday would be fair and reasonable in this case because he says it was “completely ruined” because of the continual need to speak to SJP and his ongoing worry which pre-occupied him.”
He concluded the reason Mr P had to spend so much time contacting SJP was due to the error of another provider, but acknowledged SJP could have done more to prevent it.
He called the £500 compensation a fair reflection of the impact of the incident, which SJP was given until June 10 to pay.
SJP declined to comment on the case.
tara.o'connor@ft.com
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