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Savers moving their pension from one provider to another face a lottery on how long it takes, with some firms doing transfers in just 12 days while others can take two months or more.
Analysis by consolidation service PensionBee of more than 50,000 transfers processed since 2016 showed huge variation between firms.
Aviva was the best performing, with an average transfer time of 12 days, while Mercer was the worst with 62 days. Regulations require providers to complete transfers within six months.
Also in the bottom five were Now Pensions, taking an average of 61 days, Capita, 45, Willis Towers Watson, 42, and Smart Pension, 36. The average time across the 24 firms was 20 days.
Reasons for moving a pension could be to make it easier to manage or have lower fees or flexible withdrawals. Delays could mean sitting in cash, missing out on investment returns.
A spokesman for Mercer said it was “committed to continuous improvement in our pensions administration service”. The bulk of the transfers it carried out were defined benefit transfers, which are subject to greater checks to limit the risk of savers falling victim to scams.
Now Pensions said “historic administration issues” had held up many transfers but the majority were now being processed. A spokesman added: “These historic cases impact the averages adversely. However, it is important to settle them as soon as is practical, irrespective of the impact on our average times.”
Sue Whittington, of Smart Pension, said it had only processed a small number of transfers, and added: “We have recently agreed improved service standards with our trustee to deliver faster transfers.”
Willis Towers Watson, a third-party administrator that liaises with investment managers on transfers, said the statistics were not representative of its typical transfer times for defined contribution pensions, where it said its average transfer time was 21 days. A source at another firm said the analysis was “quite superficial”.
Romi Savova, of PensionBee, said standards varied widely between providers, with some signing up to digital transfers and others not.
“The longer a transfer takes, the more likely people are to give up and decide it’s not worth the effort,” she said. “People have jobs, they’re getting married, having babies. Dealing with a pension transfer for six months is incredibly unfair.” She said delays were often due to onerous requests for documents.
When Katie de la Rosa, 25, who runs a gymnastics company, wanted to transfer a pension from Mercer to PensionBee, it took 404 days.
She had to send her original birth certificate, and even when Mercer sent confirmation of the transfer it didn’t actually send the money, said PensionBee. As Miss de la Rosa’s pension was not invested, she missed out on returns. Mercer topped up her pot in response.
“It was really frustrating. I was worried the money would disappear as no one was able to tell me where it was,” she said. Mercer said it did not discuss individual cases.
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