It’s not just new visual features like our onboarding checklist or podcast in the app we work on to improve our customers’ experience of interacting with and learning more about their pensions. A lot goes on behind the scenes to make our processes like transferring your pensions quicker.
Transferring a pension should be a quick and simple process. Unfortunately, this hasn’t historically been the case in the pensions industry. In fact, PensionBee was founded after our CEO; Romi Savova, encountered great difficulty transferring an old pension. In this month’s spotlight, we focus on some of the work we’ve been doing to improve the pension transfer process for our customers.
Making transfers quicker
Generally, the more information you can give us the faster we can transfer your pension. As a customer, there are some things you can do to help speed up your transfers. However, much of the transfer process remains out of your hands. Our ability to work with your old provider to transfer a pension depends on the accuracy of the information we hold and the speed with which we can complete building a pension record. Once we’ve done this we’ll have all the information needed to contact your old provider.
Preparing a pension transfer request
When you want to transfer a new pension we ask you to provide some basic details such as your pension’s provider and the policy number. Before we can send a transfer request to your old provider we build a pension record which collects all the details we need to send a transfer request to your old provider.
We often need to work out which department at your old provider to contact so we can send the transfer request or ask for more policy information. You may be surprised by how complicated it can be to find this out. We can sometimes determine this by the format of your pension’s policy number but some providers use several formats. To date, reviewing the information we receive and determining exactly who we need to contact has been a manual process.
Automatically matching your provider details
Our recent changes have resulted in a system that automates reviewing the pension information we receive to determine the best department to contact. The information you supply is matched automatically with the information we already hold about your old provider as far as possible. Successful matches mean we can build your pension record faster, reducing the manual review steps needed by our BeeKeepers, your UK-based personal account managers. As well as speed it also increases data accuracy, reducing the chances of errors being input on the pension record that can arise from manual input.
These improvements enable us to send the request to transfer a pension faster. It also reduces the likelihood that we’ll need to follow up with a customer if we have questions to clarify.
Increasing automatic transfer requests
We’ve also increased the number of newly added pensions we can automatically send transfer requests for to the providers.
Before sending a transfer request we perform several important checks on the pension information we receive. These include ensuring the policy number is in the correct format and that there aren’t any special benefits or exit fees. We inform our customers of any exit fees over £10 as well as any special benefits that we find. They can then decide if they still want to proceed with the transfer. If these checks pass the information can automatically be populated onto the pension record and the transfer request sent straight away.
Performing these checks automatically means there’s less need for our BeeKeepers to manually review and check this information. We can be confident a transfer request can be sent directly to your old provider. It also enables our BeeKeepers to spend more of their time resolving more complex transfer requests which can’t be automatically transferred.
Understanding your transfers’ status
After a new pension is added to your account, otherwise known as your BeeHive, there are many steps involved in transferring it. Sometimes a transfer needs to be put on hold. If it is, we’ll let you know why and what you need to do in the ‘Transfers’ tab of your BeeHive. Some of the reasons your pension may be put on hold we’ll let you know about include:
You’ve added a pension your employer’s actively paying into. We’ll let you know you’ll need to wait at least six weeks after you’ve left your job before resuming the transfer. Some providers won’t supply us with the information we need unless we can give them a policy number. We’ll let you know if you need to supply a policy number or contact your old provider’s HR department to find out what it is.
We’ll always email you if your transfer has been put on hold and any actions are needed. But we also wanted to be able to update you within the BeeHive if we require any further information about your transfers.
Transfer on hold notification
When you’re in your BeeHive it’s now easier to see if you need to take action on any of your pension transfers. If your transfer’s been put on hold you’ll see a notification on your ‘Funds’ tab.
Tap on the ‘Funds’ tab where we’ll highlight there’s an important notification related to your Transfers.
The notification is only available in the app at present but we’ll be expanding it to the online BeeHive soon too.
Future product news
Keep your eye out for our next product blog or catch up on previous posts. We’re looking forward to spotlighting more of our handy features and free financial tools plus we’ve got lots of great new updates in the works we’re looking forward to bringing you. Once released, we’ll let you know what they are and how they can help you save for a happy retirement.
Risk warning
As always with investments, your capital is at risk. The value of your investment can go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. This information should not be regarded as financial advice.
