A sharp fall, but on a shrinking base
The uphold rate for Financial Ombudsman decisions concerning pension transfer advice fell by 17.6 percentage points in the most recent 90-day window compared with the one before it, according to Veste's analysis of the published decisions data. In the prior 90-day window, 109 decisions were recorded with an uphold rate of 45.4%. In the most recent 90-day window, that fell to 88 decisions and an uphold rate of 27.8%. Both windows meet Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so the comparison is not built on an unreasonably thin slice of data, but the fall of 21 decisions between the two periods (a drop of 19.3%) means the uphold-rate movement is happening on a smaller pool of cases than before.
This is a claim-level category covering complaints about advice to transfer defined benefit pensions into defined contribution schemes, unsuitable DB-to-DC recommendations, inadequate transfer value analysis and breaches of the FCA's COBS 19 rules. Across the full corpus analysed, 7,594 decisions have been published on this subject since first appearing on 2013-04-09, with the most recent decision dated 2026-06-15. Of those, 3,860 were upheld, 440 partially upheld and 3,294 not upheld, giving an overall uphold rate of 53.7% for the entire history of the category. That headline figure sits well above the uphold rate for the whole Financial Ombudsman corpus Veste has analysed, which stands at 28.8% across 401,815 decisions with an outcome. Pension transfer advice complaints, in other words, have historically been upheld far more often than the typical Ombudsman case, even though the latest quarterly reading has fallen close to that wider baseline.
What the numbers actually show
Veste's uphold-rate definition, applied consistently throughout this analysis, is (upheld + 0.5 × partially upheld) ÷ total. That formula gives partially upheld decisions half weight, which matters here because the current 90-day window contains a mix of full and partial outcomes rather than a simple binary split.
The monthly series, which runs for 25 months from 2024-06-01 to 2026-06-01, gives a fuller picture than the two 90-day windows alone. Monthly uphold rates over that period have ranged as high as 56.8% (January 2026) and as low as 25% (May 2026), with volumes ranging from a low of 13 decisions in June 2026 to a high of 98 in March 2025. The three most recent months on record, April, May and June 2026, show totals of 24, 20 and 13 decisions respectively, well below the monthly counts seen through most of 2024 and early 2025, when totals regularly exceeded 40 or 50. This decline in monthly volume is the backdrop against which the 90-day uphold-rate fall should be read: fewer decisions each month means each individual case has more influence on the resulting percentage, and short-term swings are more likely to reflect the makeup of a small batch of cases than a genuine shift in how firms or the Ombudsman are handling this type of complaint.
The multi-year picture
The year-on-year figures show the decline is not confined to the last three months. Uphold rates by year were 53.8% in 2022 (1,029 decisions), 72.8% in 2023 (1,402 decisions), 50.1% in 2024 (732 decisions), 40.7% in 2025 (594 decisions) and 36.8% so far in 2026 (182 decisions). Each of these annual samples meets Veste's minimum sample size. Read together, they describe a category that peaked sharply in 2023, both in the proportion of complaints upheld and, to a lesser extent, in volume, before falling in successive years on both counts. The most recent 90-day figure of 27.8% is consistent with, rather than a sudden departure from, that longer downward trajectory, though it does sit below even the reduced 2026 annual average of 36.8% recorded so far.
It is worth being precise about what this trend does and does not show. A falling uphold rate over several years could reflect firms adjusting their advice processes, changes in the mix of cases reaching the Ombudsman, or shifts in how existing rules are being applied to older transfer advice as it works through the system. The data supplied does not distinguish between these explanations, and Veste has not been given information that would allow a causal explanation to be established. What can be said is that the direction of travel, both in uphold rate and in decision volume, has been consistently downward since 2023.
Firm mix is highly uneven
Any discussion of pension transfer advice needs to acknowledge how differently individual firms feature in the published decisions. Among firms meeting Veste's minimum sample size, the uphold rates recorded range enormously. Options UK Personal Pensions LLP has a recorded uphold rate of 100% across 248 decisions, with all 248 upheld and none partially upheld or not upheld. Portal Financial Services LLP shows a 92.8% uphold rate across 188 decisions (173 upheld, 3 partial, 12 not upheld). At the other end, The Royal London Mutual Insurance Society Limited shows a 19.8% uphold rate across 167 decisions, and The Prudential Assurance Company Limited and Phoenix Life Limited show 21.9% and 21.8% respectively, across 344 and 202 decisions.
Other firms sit in between: Aviva Life & Pensions UK Limited at 34.1% across 343 decisions, ReAssure Limited at 28.9% across 194 decisions, Scottish Widows Limited at 23.8% across 141 decisions, Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada (U.K.) Limited at 43.5% across 139 decisions, and Zurich Assurance Ltd at 39.5% across 133 decisions.
This spread illustrates an important methodological point: firms are counted here by the exact business name recorded on each decision, so subsidiaries of the same wider banking or insurance group appear as separate entities and are not combined into a single group figure. A very high or very low uphold rate for one named entity says nothing about a parent group or sister companies that are not named in this dataset.
The scale of the gap between, say, Options UK Personal Pensions LLP at 100% and The Royal London Mutual Insurance Society Limited at 19.8% is large enough that it cannot be dismissed as noise, given that both samples comfortably exceed the minimum threshold of 30 decisions. But this reflects the mix of specific cases published against each named entity, not a like-for-like comparison of identical complaint circumstances, and Veste's data does not indicate whether the underlying complaints against each firm were comparable in substance.
Individual decisions as illustration
Four decisions published in the most recent weeks give a flavour of the range of issues reaching the Ombudsman under this category, though none of them should be read as representative of a trend on their own.
In one case, decided 2026-06-11, the Ombudsman did not uphold a complaint against Quilter Financial Limited concerning advice to a 55-year-old with volatile self-employed income to transfer a Section 32 pension with a guaranteed minimum pension of £10,200 a year, alongside other pensions totalling under £200,000. The Ombudsman found the advice suitable because the complainant held other guaranteed income sources exceeding £31,000 a year and had a genuine immediate need for the £25,000 lump sum taken to clear debts.
In another, decided 2026-06-10, the Ombudsman upheld a complaint against True Potential Wealth Management LLP (trading as True Potential), finding that a pension transfer had been advised, despite the firm's characterisation of it as a non-advised direct offer, and that the transfer offered no material benefit while marginally increasing costs. Compensation was ordered based on comparing the actual and notional value of the pension.
A third decision, also dated 2026-06-10, did not uphold a complaint against WPS Advisory Ltd, where a complainant alleged the firm had given misleading reassurances that led him to delay a defined benefit transfer, during which the cash equivalent transfer value fell from £1,053,000 to £433,450. The Ombudsman found the firm had not advised delay and had not given the assurances alleged.
A fourth, dated 2026-06-15, partially upheld a complaint against Scottish Equitable plc (Aegon) over inconsistent information about policy terms and pension access, awarding £850 in compensation for distress caused by administrative shortcomings, while finding the complainant's delay in accessing the pension was driven by his own unwillingness to pay an £800 early surrender charge rather than by Aegon's errors.
These four cases show the range of fact patterns within the category, from suitability disputes over guaranteed benefits to administrative and communication failures, and from full uphold to partial uphold to non-uphold outcomes. They illustrate the category rather than prove anything about its overall direction.
What this does and does not tell us
The supplied data establishes that the uphold rate for pension transfer advice complaints has fallen substantially over the past 90 days compared with the preceding 90 days, and that this sits within a longer decline visible since the peak year-on-year rate of 72.8% in 2023. It also establishes that decision volume has fallen alongside the uphold rate, both in the 90-day comparison and in the monthly trend through 2026.
What it cannot establish is why. The data does not indicate whether firms have changed their advice practices, whether the mix of complaints reaching the Ombudsman has shifted towards weaker cases, or whether case backlogs and processing patterns explain the reduced volume. Published Ombudsman decisions are also not the same population as all complaints made to a firm; many complaints are resolved before reaching a published decision, so this analysis speaks only to the subset that reached a formal published outcome.
The takeaway for readers of this data
The headline 17.6 percentage point fall is real within the terms of this dataset, but it arrives on a reduced sample of 88 decisions against 109 previously, and it continues a decline that has been visible since 2023 rather than representing a sudden break. Anyone using this category to assess a specific firm's likely conduct should look at that firm's individual published record, given how widely uphold rates vary between named entities in this data, from 100% to under 20%, rather than relying on the category-wide figure.
Related Veste data
Readers can explore the Pension transfer advice statistics page directly, alongside the broader Pension product category and All Financial Ombudsman statistics.