Zurich Pension Review

Click here if this is your business
Zurich Pension
★☆☆☆☆
0.9
From 7 reviews
0.0% of users recommend this
  • Customer Service

  • Ease of Use

  • Value For Money

Click here if this is your business

gevers's review of Zurich Pension

“My employer's pension scheme was with Zurich, so by...”

☆☆☆☆☆

written by gevers on 04/02/2005

Good Points
None

Bad Points
Excessive charges (65%), poor service, poor communication.

General Comments
My employer's pension scheme was with Zurich, so by choosing it I benefitted by my employer making contributions to my scheme. Or so I thought, actually Zurich benefitted, as for every pound put into the scheme, they pocketed 65 pence.

This 65% "charge" was not called a charge though, they referred to it as 'reduced allocation'.



When I subsequently changed jobs, my new employer's pension administrators had to write five times before Zurich transferred what was left of the pension - the transfer process took a year to complete.



I would recommend anyone to steer well clear of Zurich and their associated advisors - mine was Barry Cunningham Associates.

If you are commenting on behalf of the company that has been reviewed, please consider upgrading to Official Business Response for higher impact replies.

Barry Cunningham's Response to gevers's Review

Written on: 03/03/2010

I am sorry for the way Mr Gevers feels about the service he received from my practice whilst I was with Zurich.
<br/>
<br/>Unfortunately in the lead up to the Governments Stakeholder review in 2001, many pension providers were trying to redesign their older pension contracts charging structures to meet the Stakeholder cryteria. ie. that in future stakeholder pensions should not have transfer penalties.
<br/>
<br/>Zurich at this stage made ammendements to their older style pensions which had up front charges by increasing the transfer value so that effectively this up front charge was reinvested. Therefore you would have received a transfer value commensurate with the contributions made.
<br/>
<br/>These changes Zurich made I believe were well intended but complex. Effectively you would have paid a charge of 65% of his contributions for the first year or so and then he would get 105% of his contributions invested for the rest of the term to retirement. This extra 5% bonus would actually cancell out the initial charge. In theory the client would only suffer if he transfered away because he would not get the benefit of 20 odd years of 5% bonus. However the enhancements Zurich made to the transfer value actually solved this problem. In effect, not a bad contract at all.
<br/>
<br/>This was explained at our meetings and he was provided with the Zurich illustration and Key Features which would detail this situation.
<br/>
<br/>Indeed looking through my files I can see several calls we made to offer him further help with resolving this issue however he declined the offer.
<br/>
<br/>As Independent Financial Advisers and pension specialists now, I would be happy to help you understand this and other pension issues if you want to.
<br/>
<br/>

Reply to this comment
If you are commenting on behalf of the company that has been reviewed, please consider upgrading to Official Business Response for higher impact replies.

Bobqq's Response to gevers's Review

Written on: 22/01/2011

Whilst appreciating Gravers review and finding it of value the clarification provided was very beneficial. My company is about to transfer its scheme to Zurich so it has encouraged me to seek further comments

Reply to this comment
If you are commenting on behalf of the company that has been reviewed, please consider upgrading to Official Business Response for higher impact replies.
Was this review helpful? 1 0