The Pensions Ombudsman (TPO) has upheld a complaint against Scottish Widows over its administration of a saver’s pension benefits.

TPO ruled that Scottish Widows was responsible for deferred pension benefits accrued by ‘Mr S’ that had gone missing when he moved from the WH Price Ltd Retirement Benefits Scheme to the Hewden Stuart Pension Scheme in April 1996.

Scottish Widows has been ordered to pay Mr S a deferred annuity equal in value to the deferred pension benefits he had accrued in the WH Price scheme up to 5 April 1996, making allowance for the statutory revaluation increase that the benefits would have attracted.

Furthermore, it was told to pay Mr S £500 for the “significant” distress and inconvenience the ordeal has caused.

Scottish Widows was the administrator or the WH Price scheme and failed to include Mr S in the list of members transferring to the Hewden Stuart Pension scheme it sent to Mr S’s new scheme administrators.

In 2003, the insurer has been liaising with the Inland Revenue National Insurance Contributions Office to try and reconcile the membership and GMP records of the WH Price scheme members.

The office informed Scottish Widows that Mr S and five other members had transferred out of the scheme, but Scottish Widows thought they were still members. The insurer subsequently modified its records to show that Mr S’s past service benefits had been transferred.

The WH Price scheme wound up in 2005.

In February 2017, Mr S contacted Scottish Widows because he was concerned that his deferred pension benefits under the scheme may have gone missing.

Scottish Widow’s reply said that it no longer provided administration services for the WH Price scheme, but according to its records Mr S had transferred his benefits to the Hewden Stuart Pension Scheme in about January 2004.

On 19 September 2017 Mr S emailed his paperwork to Scottish Widows and asked for the missing transfer to be investigated.

Following back and forth correspondence between the administrators if the two schemes, HMRC The Pensions Advisory Service and the Inland Revenue National Insurance Contributions Office, Scottish Widows said that it believed it was not liable for the missing benefits.

However, first the adjudicator then the ombudsman both found that Scottish Widows was liable and upheld the complaint.

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