Scottish Equitable Plc · DRN-6184776

The complaint Mr D complains that Scottish Equitable Plc trading as Aegon delayed transferring his pensions to a third party provider, which led to him experiencing a financial loss. What happened Mr D held a pension with Aegon which comprised of three wrappers. In early April 2025 he decided to transfer to another pension provider who I will refer to as Provider A. Upon receipt of the transfer instruction, Aegon commenced the disinvestment of Mr D’s three pension wrappers, and following the sale of the funds, they transferred the proceeds to Provider A. During the time between the disinvestment date of the funds and the transfers, investment markets experienced a significant recovery due to worldwide events. Because Mr D was unhappy with the delays in transferring his monies, Mr D submitted a complaint to Aegon. Mr D stated that had everything been transferred the same day as the first one, the impact would be significantly different because by the time two of his three pension wrappers had been transferred the recovery meant that the money was out of the market during the recovery. On 14 May 2025, Aegon wrote to Mr D to update him because they had not been able to complete their response. On 16 May 2025, Aegon called Mr D to discuss his complaint and subsequently issued a final response on 26 May 2025. In that response, Aegon explained that the three wrappers forming his pension arrangement were separate plans and were therefore processed at different times by their Money Out team. They confirmed that each wrapper was disinvested within the next two dealing points after receiving the request. Two wrappers held the same investment fund and the sale proceeds became available at the same time. The third wrapper took longer because it held a wider range of funds. Aegon said the proceeds became available within six working days, and payment was made the next working day. In conclusion the response stated that the funds were disinvested from their investment strategies within six working days and available the following working day. They were comfortable that each step was completed within their normal timescales, and stated they had included call recordings of the telephone calls in relation to Mr D’s complaint. On 6 August 2025, Mr D forwarded his complaint to this service. He had not received a final response, and reiterated his point, that although Aegon had worked to its SLAs, this did not justify the fact that his funds were taken out of the market at the same time for the three pensions, but the transfer was not done on the same day, with Aegon transferring the higher value pot after the longest amount of time. He stated that the delay meant that his funds were taken out of the market at the lowest point and the delays in re-entering the market resulted in the funds incurring significant loss due to the recovery that took place in the meantime. Although Mr D acknowledges that this may have happened anyway, the impact of it was exacerbated by Aegon’s inconsistent application of the three pensions.

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On 16 December, a further response was issued by Aegon, relating to the lack of a written response to Mr D’s previous complaint following a call on 25 May 2025, the failure to provide call recordings Mr D had requested, lack of responses to chaser emails, and reiterating his disagreement with the previous findings (that the transfer was within SLA). Aegon partially upheld the complaint, in recognition of the inconvenience caused by email communication error, and paid Mr D £100. They stated that a resolution email was sent on 26 May 2025, however this had bounced back but had not been picked up. Aegon resent the requested call recordings. They apologised for the lack of responses to chaser emails but maintained their stance in relation to the transfer of the pensions, reconfirming that all three transfers were completed within their standard timescales. On 26 November 2025, Aegon wrote to Mr D because they had identified an error with the way that part of his fund had been invested. This resulted in a loss which Aegon had calculated as £249. They asked Mr D to make contact to agree what to do with it. The correspondence on file indicates that this was the case for each of Mr D’s three wrappers. Mr D told this service that when he requested the three loss amounts be transferred to Provider A, they were transferred on 8 January 2026, 9 January 2026 and 16 January 2026. He states this was another example of Aegon holding on to monies for no reason. On 5 February 2026, our investigator provided her view. She did not uphold the complaint and stated that Aegon did not need to take any action. Having carried out an investigation, the investigator concluded that Aegon had met their own service standards, which were in line with industry wide best practice (that a cash transfer should take no longer than ten working days). She concluded that Aegon had not acted unfairly or unreasonably in taking the amount of time it did to complete the transfers. Mr D responded on 9 February 2026. He agreed that taking seven days was reasonable, but reiterated that his point was about consistency, and why his three pensions were not transferred on the same day (as they were when the funds were initially disinvested). He subsequently added that he believed that Aegon holding his larger pension for longer financially benefited them and that he should be compensated for this. Because Mr D did not agree with the investigator’s view, the complaint has been forwarded to me for a decision to be made. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. Having done so, I am in agreement with the investigator, and for broadly the same reasons. In summary, I am satisfied that Aegon acted within normal timescales when disinvesting and transferring Mr D’s three pension wrappers. Although the wrappers were completed on different days, I am persuaded this was due to the differing investment holdings and standard internal checks, not because Aegon unfairly delayed matters. For clarity, I have summarised below Mr D’s wrappers, with an outline of the funds in which they were invested, the dates of the disinvestment, the amounts transferred, and the date of the transfer. Throughout his correspondence to this service, Mr D has stated that his largest wrapper was transferred last, meaning that Aegon retained his monies for longest before transferring to the new provider. The evidence I have been provided suggests that this is not the case. Mr D held three pension wrappers with Aegon, which I will refer to as P1, P2 and P3. At the time

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of Mr D’s transfer request, on 4 April 2025, P1 was valued at £33,617, P2 at £318,536 and P3 at £63,527. I have been provided with transaction summaries from Aegon showing that P1 was transferred to the new provider on 10 April (£31,450 transferred), P2 was transferred on 11 April 2025 (£318,536) and P3 on 15 April 2025. The timeline and values can be seen in the table below. Wrapper ID Investments Value Date request received Date of disinvestment from asset Amount transferred Date transferred P1 7XXXX240 Aegon Workplace Default 2026 £33,617 4 April 2025 08/04/2025 £34,150 10/04/2025 P2 7XXXX265 Aegon Workplace Default 2026 £318,536 4 April 2025 09/04/2025 £323,646 11/04/2025 P3 7XXXX029 A range of thirteen different funds, one of which was the Aegon Workplace Default 2026 as above £63,527 4 April 2025 08/04/2025 £65,106 15/04/2025 For clarity, disinvestment refers to the point at which the provider instructs the sale of the underlying investments held in the pension wrapper. After this date, the fund manager processes the sale, the investment units are sold and the proceeds then settle into the cash facility. I note that although Mr D submitted his request for the transfer of all three pension wrappers at the same time on 4 April 2025 (a Friday), the disinvestment date for the policies was 8 April 2025 for P1 and P3, and 9 April 2025 for P2. Aegon have explained that the reason for this was that each wrapper transfer was dealt with individually, with the instructions being dealt with by different people. I note that for P2, the screenshots showing the transactions undertaken states that due to being over £300,000, the transaction required additional checks. It is reasonable to consider that this step would have taken additional time to complete, which may go some way towards explaining why the disinvestment date for this policy was different. Regardless of this, the disinvestment was carried out within Aegon’s standard timescales. I note that P1 and P2 took the same number of working days from the disinvestment date to the date they were transferred. These wrappers contained the same investments. However, P3 held a range of investments, which differed from those within P1 and P2. Aegon have explained that investments may take different times to process the sales, which is carried out by their investment managers. I have considered whether it is reasonable that wrappers containing differing funds will take different amounts of time to process and I am satisfied that it is. It is useful to fully understand the process by which Mr D’s pension was disinvested and transferred. Aegon have confirmed that in line with their terms and conditions, the trades were priced on 7 and 8 April 2025, although the last of the sales were not completed until 14

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April 2025. The reason for this timelag is because Aegon use a form of pre-funding to determine the price the funds are sold at. They price a trade within two dealing points, even though a fund manager will not have completed the transaction by this point. Therefore, whilst Aegon are in control of how long it takes to price the sale of the funds, they do not have the same control over how long a fund manager takes to complete the sale itself. Having considered the number of funds within Mr D’s three pension wrappers, I do not think it is unreasonable that the third wrapper to transfer took the longest. I would also like to comment here that had the value of the investments themselves reduced during the relevant period following the disinvestment date, the higher price would have been what was transferred to Mr D. I therefore do not think it is reasonable to conclude that Aegon deliberately took longer to process the transfer of P2 due to the value, nor that they retained the monies from the larger fund for a longer period of time for their financial benefit. Aegon have paid Mr D £100 in relation to the poor service received by their lack of responses to Mr D when he was chasing the response that had not been received. This is in line with the amount that this service would have instructed them to pay for an error such as this, I am therefore not asking Aegon to do anything further. I therefore partially uphold Mr D’s complaint in respect of the poor service received. My final decision I partially uphold Mr D's complaint against Scottish Equitable Plc trading as Aegon. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr D to accept or reject my decision before 20 April 2026. Joanne Molloy Ombudsman

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