Fidelity and Curtis Banks have both been ordered to pay out over a delay in effecting the transfer of a client’s pension rights.

The customer complained that he lost about £14,000 as a result.

The Pensions Ombudsman has upheld his complaint.

Mr Y said that delays on the part of Curtis Banks and Fidelity in effecting a Sipp transfer cost him financially and claimed he suffered distress and inconvenience because of these delays.

Fidelity sent details of Mr Y’s transfer request electronically to Curtis Banks on 4 December 2014 using the electronic pension transfer system ORIGO, the Ombudsman report detailed. It added that on the same day Curtis Banks received a letter from Mr Y notifying it of his proposed transfer and replied that it would await the relevant forms from Fidelity before processing his request.

Curtis Banks accepted that taking nearly three months to complete Mr Y’s transfer was too long and they should have notified Fidelity on 5 December 2014 that they were unable to carry out the transfer request using ORIGO, according to the Ombudsman report.

But due to an oversight on their part, they failed to do this until 9 January 2015, 23 working days later.

Curtis Banks determined that if there had not been any undue delays the transfer process could have been completed by 29 December 2014 and Mr Y has therefore suffered a financial loss of £13,917.06 (calculated as at 14 November 2016).

Curtis Banks said that it was prepared to compensate Mr Y for 50% of this loss (i.e. £6,958.53) if Fidelity agreed to pay the other 50%. Curtis Banks considered that an equal split to be fair because, in its view, Fidelity ought to have requested an update 10 working days after sending the transfer request via ORIGO on 4 December 2014 instead of waiting until 9 January 2015 before doing this.

Curtis Banks said it was willing as a gesture of goodwill towards Mr F to pay him an additional £250 in recognition of the distress and inconvenience the client suffered.

Fidelity agreed that taking nearly three months to complete Mr Y’s transfer was too long and also accepted that it delayed the transfer process by taking 13 working days to send the discharge form which it had received on 13 January 2015 to Mr Y for completion.

But Fidelity contended that the onus was on Curtis Banks as the transferring scheme administrator to respond to the transfer request within the 10 working days service level agreement set by ORIGO and it was under no obligation to seek an update on the transfer and only did so because over one month had passed without a reply.

They do not therefore accept that they were partly responsible for the first delay which in their view was solely caused by Curtis Banks failure.

The ombudsman agreed with the adjudicator that both parties were responsible for delays.

He said Curtis Banks was responsible for the first period of delay and Fidelity for the second.

The ombudsman said Curtis Banks and Fidelity should:

◦ recalculate the compensation amount payable to Mr Y at the date of settlement;
◦ Curtis Banks shall pay 64% of this amount into Mr Y’s Fidelity SIPP;
◦ Fidelity shall pay 36% of this amount into Mr Y’s Fidelity SIPP
◦ Each shall pay Mr Y £250 in recognition of the distress and inconvenience which he has suffered dealing with this matter.