AXA Sunlife Pension

Bought end of life policy with AXA sunlife many years ago, after a few years I was informed my insurer was now friends provident then several years afterwards my insurers became Aviva. I wasn't given an option to stay with AXA sunlife at all. Their advertising says they pay out on 100% of claims - doubt if they hold onto many policies long enough to pay out claims. Certainly wouldn't recommend.

Would nod not recommend them to anyone had a total withdrawal on my pension they paid the money into my bank account which I thought was mine then two years later got a bill from inland revenue for £3400 has to pay most of it back to axa and the rest to inland revenue with a total compensation of £500 from axa totally incompetent

Got to agree with earlier poster re. AXA sunlife...getting statements and valuations was almost impossible...the IFA who set it up said "they only send them once a year"! On a £500,000 fund, with fees charged accordingly?

(IFA and AXA now sacked and funds doing very nicely with a brilliant manager who deals with me direct, and will give me daily valuations and information whenever requested.}

This lot are a complete shower

The fees are high and never stated

Statements are never sent

You never know where you stand with them

My advice is to avoid

Having placed a lump sum with Sun Life (now AXA SUN LIFE) in a Flexible Transfer Plan over 20 yrs ago, all projections were wildly assumed. Even taking account of poor performance years and "Credit Crunch" we were surprised to find that the Maximum Tax Free Cash sum, plus annual pension available last year has reduced this year by a third. Unless you know the name of the policy, which Axa Sun Life has given to your original policy,you are unable to find any help even with Pension Advisory Services as there are pages upon pages of Policy names . I would have thought that someone at Axa Sun Life,given our policy ref number, would at least be able to tell us WHICH policy name we were invested in. No information is available and the person who rang us back knew nothing as he said he was only doing a favour for another department in doing call backs. You are left feeling that there is absolutely no one department, let alone person , whom you can contact.

Pension was deliberately set up to pay off my mortgage, age 60 - I was assured that this would be from the realizable cash element of the pension fund (25%). Monthly payments were made over years & initially, the fund seemed to function reasonably well. This, by the way, described as a "Managed Fund". Around 6-8 yrs ago however, it consistently lost money &/or the yearly statements of its worth vacillated hugely (e. g circa £55K to £550K). I wrote to the advisors who had set the fund up with AXA & they simply said "Pay more per month". & initially I did, although this did not bring about much improvement. The fund will not meet the set objective (This based on the lowest growth projections) & I will be forced to sell our family home before I'm 60 (Currently 55). It was pointed out that I did not earn enough (!) - For some reason they assumed I would receive annual upward pay rises (Sadly, however, I live in the real world).

The term "Managed Fund" is clearly a misnomer. The illustrations/projections appear to have been grossly incorrect. The stated objective of the fund was, it seems ignored OR it was the wrong product for purpose in the first place. Being advised to put more money into a failing scheme was rather like shredding £20 notes over a toilet.

I would never ever recommend anyone to trust their money to AXA after my experiences of this company.

Their pension plan was recommended to me by an independent financial advisor, and since applying for a pension in April 2007 I have had nothing but trouble.

They were quick enough to take the lump sum of money and put it in a holding account until the pension was set up. I waited about a month for confirmation of policy set up to come through, yet nothing arrived so I called them 3 times over the following month and a half ....each time I was told that they would send out a form for me to sign, yet nothing ever arrived.

At this point I decided that I wished to cancel the application and get my money back, but this also has given me nothing but problems. I spoke to numerous people and have been told conflicting information over the last three months, and yet still they have not cancelled the application or returned my money .... they have been holding onto my lump sum for approximately 4 months now, and seem to be using delaying tactics to avoid returning it.

I am very frustrated with AXA at being messed around over so many months and that it is still ongoing. I'm also angry that I have lost out on a valuable number of month's interest. If things are not resolved shortly, I am thinking of writing to the Financial Ombudsman.

Please take my experiences as a warning and do not trust your money to AXA.

This is not a measure of market performance, more a reflection of the incompetence of Axa who, upon the acquisition of Sun Life some years ago, assured us that there would be a significant improvement in returns. Instead, they have milked our original investments dry!

I would have done better looking after my own money rather than listening to the "experts" at AXA Sunlife Pension.

AXA Sunlife seem to have lost my original application; even so, they have treated my second application without any urgency, and have failed to meet the terms of their own complaints policy.