A reader who has spent years battling Aviva to get her terminally ill husband’s pension had no success until our financial agony aunt intervened

Do you have a financial anxiety, dilemma or quandary? Ask Jessie Hewitson, veteran money journalist and editor, and financial agony aunt for The i Paper. Email questions to money@inews.co.uk, with Ask Jessie in the subject line and she will get to work.

Anna Shaw, who is 45 and lives in Lincolnshire, wrote:

It has been more than three years since my husband started the process of accessing his pension – and we’re still fighting to get what he’s owed.

Peter is seriously ill with Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) – a rare and progressive neurological condition that affects every part of his life: speech, mobility, sleep, even his bladder function. He’s in constant discomfort and struggles with everyday tasks, and I hold power of attorney to help manage his affairs. But instead of support and compassion, we’ve faced nothing but delays, confusion and broken promises from Aviva, his pension provider.

Aviva was slow from the beginning – taking ages to send calculations, not keeping us informed, and rarely responding when we asked for updates.

Eventually, this January, it paid a tax-free lump sum and confirmed it had set up an annuity: we were told Peter would receive £6,384.22 per year in monthly payments. It wasn’t a fortune, but it was money we had planned around, and needed. But since then – nothing. We haven’t received a single monthly payment.  

Then, in May, Aviva wrote to say the amount agreed in January was changing. The new figure was £5,407.99 per year – nearly £1,000 less. We were stunned. Not only had Aviva gone back on the amount promised, but it had taken five months to tell us this – all while we received no payments at all.

We don’t believe it’s right or fair that Aviva can agree a payment, pay us a lump sum, not pay us, then revise the figures months later. How can anyone plan or live like that? It’s all been exhausting and deeply upsetting.

My husband is deteriorating. MSA is cruel enough without having to chase down basic pension payments. It’s putting him under stress he simply cannot handle. I’ve explained this to Aviva many times – how badly this is affecting his health, and how upsetting it is for both of us. But it just doesn’t seem to care.

We feel forgotten, ignored and powerless. I’ve delayed responding to Aviva’s response to a formal complaint I raised, offering £750 compensation but still insisting that we accept its lower rate. It’s hardly compensation! 

I’m speaking out now not just for us, but for others who might be going through something similar. Pension companies hold people’s futures in their hands. When they mess up, people suffer – and they can’t always fight back.

I just want what’s fair, and what my husband is entitled to. He worked all his life. He deserves better than this.

Jessie replies…

Your experience is one of the worst cases I’ve dealt with in my career. Aviva spent a minimum of two years sorting out the paperwork, possibly three (it’s unclear exactly as a financial adviser was involved at first who may have contributed to the initial delay). 

To get a sense of how unacceptable this is, a typical time frame for processing this type of pension – where in return for your savings, a company pays out an agreed amount per year for the rest of your life –  is typically four to six weeks. 

To make matters worse, Aviva has continually refused to communicate with you, explaining that you couldn’t be given an update as you weren’t one of the trustees – the people responsible for managing Peter’s company pension scheme.

Far from showing you compassion – treating you as as someone in a very difficult situation with legitimate concerns about your income – you felt you were treated as a time-waster and a nuisance. 

In one encounter, you calmly – without shouting or swearing – told an Aviva call handler that the service provided by the company was diabolical. She replied that she was offended by this criticism both personally and on behalf of Aviva, so much so that she was about to hang up. After this call you told me you were left questioning your sanity.

What Aviva did communicate to you, however, was that the trustees were the ones to blame for the delay. You doubted this, however, as you were in close communication with them, and knew they too were also at their wits’ end with Aviva. So much so they made an official complaint over lack of communication and professional incompetence, highlighting they were being asked to fill in forms that had already been returned.

Once the paperwork was eventually completed Aviva wrote to you confirming the amount Peter and you would receive for the rest of your lives. You signed and returned the forms, and received the 25 per cent lump sum you were entitled to take out of Peter’s £80,000 pension tax-free.

You breathed a sigh of relief, thinking this horrible situation was at last behind you. But it wasn’t. Five months came and went without you receiving a penny or any communication from Aviva. Then it wrote a very brief and matter-of-fact message to the trustees announcing the rate it was paying you had been “recalculated”, and you would receive £1,000 a year less.

Aviva said the payments would not start until the trustees accepted the new calculation. Luckily for you the trustees sent you the message, giving you the chance to tell them not to accept.

This, of course, would all be bad enough without a neurodegenerative health condition to contend with. Peter, who is 69, received his diagnosis of MSA at the end of 2023: it is a rare and aggressive condition that involves the loss of nerve cells in the brain with few options for treatment. I know your family don’t like talking about the details so I won’t be specific here, but the horrible reality is it is life-limiting.

Peter, who used to run his own distribution company for fruit and vegetables, is now wheelchair-bound, in constant pain, and struggles to communicate verbally. 

You first got in touch with me in early July and I asked if you had been offered the enhanced annuity payments that are typically paid out for people with lifespans that are predicted to be shorter than the average. You said you didn’t think so.

I was extremely moved and angered on your behalf by our conversations and told you I would do my very best to resolve things quickly. Clearly you didn’t have the luxury of time and had already waited years for Aviva to get its act together.

What happened to you bothered me so much it has consumed much of my summer. I have been poring over the details, trying to make sense of what has gone so wrong, emailing and calling Adam Johnson, an experienced financial advisor, who gave up an enormous amount of time to help as he too was so moved by your situation.

I emailed Aviva at the beginning of August to lay out what I understood. I put some very direct questions to Aviva, asked for explanations and for it to locate the call where its worker hung up on you and to comment on whether this behaviour was acceptable. 

I suggested it backdate your annuity payments so you weren’t out of pocket for the delay it had caused; for you to be compensated for the very significant distress and inconvenience caused; and for an explanation of why you weren’t being paid enhanced payments. Given Peter’s quickly deteriorating health, I also asked for Aviva to pay for you to receive financial advice to check that getting an annuity still is the best way to proceed, and for you and Peter to receive an apology.

I gave Aviva a week to respond and waited with my fingers crossed – and obsessively checking my inbox. 

When you emailed a couple of days later to say you had received a letter from the office of Amanda Blanc, the chief executive of Aviva, my heart leapt. She was offering an apology that you had to get in touch this way, and to confirm that her office was looking into the matter.

And then, when the time came for Aviva itself to respond, it held its hands up. It acknowledged the delays; the lack of urgency. It confirmed it had located and listened to the call, and told you: “We were struck by how composed Anna was on this call and agree our handling was not acceptable and for this we are very sorry.” It said it was putting steps in place to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Aviva said that while it was true it could report back only to the trustees, it still could have done more to communicate with you despite this. It made some attempt to explain the enormous delays, but not, in my mind, very successfully. 

It also confirmed that when working out your annuity rate the first time round it made a mistake and used the wrong calculations, meaning it had offered you too high a rate. And then “it did not provide you with the correct explanation once the error was identified”, which left you bewildered as to why Aviva appeared to have abruptly lowered the rate. 

Peter and Anna received a letter of apology from Amanda Blanc, the chief executive of Aviva

It also confirmed that enhanced payments had been considered in light of Peter’s health, but as the wrongly calculated rate was higher than the enhanced payments, this wasn’t taken forward. It offered a sincere and clear apology to you both.

To make things right, Aviva is honouring the rate it initially offered: £6,384.22 a year, rather than the updated figure of £5,407.99, and as of this month it has finally started paying you your pension. This means Aviva is now paying you a rate of 10 per cent on your pot of £60,000 (factoring in the 25 per cent tax-free portion you have already received). This is an exceptionally high rate; currently the average rate is 7 per cent.

It has also backdated the annuity payments to the date it offered that higher rate – totalling £3,700 – and has paid you £5,000 in compensation. It has also paid the fees for you to see Adam Johnson for independent financial advice. You and Peter decided an annuity still was the best option because when Peter very sadly dies, you will receive 50 per cent of the annuity income for the rest of your life (and you don’t have to be of retirement age to receive it). Given you are still young, this means you will benefit from the increased rate for a very long time.

It’s impossible to put a total value on this payout as we don’t know how long you both will live for. The lowest figure could be £30,000 but all going well it will be a far higher total figure than this. And given that your pension pot was £60,000, you will now receive a minimum of half your pension again – and a 20 per cent increase on your pension income for the rest of your lives.

It’s true that Aviva’s treatment of Peter’s annuity was a heartless omnishambles, but to be fair to Aviva not all companies hold their hands up in this way when they are exposed. Some just dig in further.

What we’ve achieved together is a “win”, but it does not – and could never – properly compensate you for your real loss, which is time.

Once we knew your ordeal had finally come to an end you sent me an email, which best sums up the true cost to your family.

“I feel a deep mix of emotions. There’s relief, of course – after years of confusion, distress and feeling ignored, it finally feels like someone truly listened.

“But there’s also sadness, because this fight cost us time we’ll never get back. Time we should have spent focusing on Peter’s care, his comfort, and simply being together. I wish I could undo the months of stress, the sleepless nights, and the moments I spent doubting myself.

“That time was precious, and I’ll always carry the regret of having to spend so much of it chasing what should have been a simple process. But I’m also grateful – to Jessie for caring when so few did, and to those at Aviva who, eventually, helped put things right. I just hope that by sharing our experience, it helps prevent others from having to go through the same.”

I wish you and Peter all the best. I know I will look back on this case as one of the ones I’m proudest to have helped resolve.