Seeing our advert prompted Mr M to come to us at the end of 2023 to see if he had a claim. Mr M was a teacher with a Free Standing Additional Voluntary Contributions (FSAVC) with London & Manchester now Aviva. After a brief phone call a pack with forms was sent out to Mr M.
An information request was then sent off to the provider with a reply a month later with policy details. We weren’t sure if the policy number they sent to us was for the FSAVC or not however we went ahead and sent the complaint knowing if it wasn’t the correct number they would then tell us.
Aviva soon let us know that that policy number was not an FSAVC but a Personal Pension Plan. We went back to the client letting him know the outcome, he was very sure that number was the FSAVC but we agreed to close the complaint and Mr M would come back to us if he found anymore paperwork.
A month later after speaking with the client again still adamant it wasn’t a Personal Pension as he took it out when teaching and knew he wasn’t allowed to pay into a personal pension when a member of the Teachers Pension Scheme. We agree to reopen the complaint and write to Aviva again asking them to obtain the sales files and investigate.
The provider later confirmed it was actually the FSAVC number and requested we do a questionnaire with the client to gain more information.
Once the questionnaire was completed and sent back to them, they later upheld the complaint on charges, and we received an offer a month later offering £4,043.61 however it was capped at the date Mr M took out the In House AVC in 1997. The manager here at It Is Your Money checked over the offer and calculations and didn’t agree with the offer.
Mr M was happy for us to appeal the offer asking for it to be re calculated, we sent further evidence with this. Aviva agreed to re calculate and said it was an oversite. New offer received offering Mr M £5,096.92 ourselves and Mr M were happy with the new offer.