Partially upheld: failure to provide policy document and provision of conflicting/misleading information complaint against Rothesay Life Plc trading as Rothesay

Decision detail

Summary

Mr T complained that Rothesay failed to provide him with an individual policy document following the transfer of his pension benefits from an occupational pension scheme and provided conflicting information about when the document would be available. Rothesay's welcome letter stated the policy document would be issued at the end of 2026 after data reconciliation projects completed. However, when Mr T called for clarification, he was told on two separate occasions that the document would be available 'in the near future' and then that it was available in his online account, before being told it would not be issued until end of 2026. The ombudsman upheld the complaint in part, finding the incorrect telephone and email responses caused Mr T inconvenience and loss of expectation, and ordered £100 compensation, but did not require Rothesay to accelerate the issuance of the policy document.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that while the welcome letter clearly set out the end of 2026 timeframe and it was not unreasonable for Rothesay to complete data assurance exercises before issuing policy documents, Mr T was given incorrect or misleading information on two separate occasions when he called for clarification. The ombudsman reasoned that consumers are likely to place greater weight on tailored telephone and email responses to their specific questions than on generic mailings. Although the impact was relatively minor and Rothesay corrected the information relatively quickly, Mr T suffered inconvenience and loss of expectation by being given false expectations about document availability.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website