Meeting the current and 124^th Lord Mayor of Manchester, Donna Ludford, yesterday morning.

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Pension Providers That Lie
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Summary: Based on my own experience and a multi-month investigation (dealing with several pensions going back 12 years), pension funds in the UK are truly awful and definitely not trustworthy; colleagues too are receiving no replies to very simple enquiries and money just goes ‘missing’ with neither notification nor explanation, probably plundered by failing companies like Sirius ‘Open Source’ (which does not obey laws and keeps hiding)

THE video above is hopefully a good enough roundup of what’s happening or has been happening at Sirius ‘Open Source’ when it comes to pensions alone. We’ve been covering the subject every month since December and the latest is a whole mini-series about “Sirius ‘Open Source’ Pensiongate”. Earlier today we finally named one of the culprits (after months of frustrating lies) and the above plays a portion from a 26-minute phonecall (0:34-1:00, 7:06-7:40, 15:40 onward, 18:10-20:10, 21:05-25:03), basically skipping personal details, waiting time, and the duration they put me on hold (for over 8 minutes). The person who picked the call said he “spoke to a colleague of mine” and insisted that it “takes more investigation” or it’s “longer to process”. But it has been 20+ days since that call and his promise of letters within 5 working days wasn’t fulfilled. To make matters worse, I’ve contacted them by E-mail several times since then and they’re not even replying.

The conclusion of the series will be, no matter where you live and irrespective of how “reputable” a firm may be, if you have a pension you need to check that it is really there; either the employer or the pension providers can run away with the money without notifying anybody. Do not take anything for granted. Many of these things are like Ponzi schemes or scams. Compare to these, “bullshit jobs” are reasonably benign.

Facilitator of Fraud? There Is Already an Official Track Record of Misconduct.

Summary: There seems to be quite a crisis in British pension funds, which casualty ‘disappear’ funds and enable companies to plunder staff and former staff; in this series we focus on two such funds, one of which employs close to 10,000 people and covers very many companies (millions of people’s pensions)

Founded relatively recently (2011), the pension provider currently used by Sirius ‘Open Source’ has quite a colourful (and surprisingly short) past. It was moaning about the state of the economy in recent years (in public filings that we saw) and it probably struggles a lot. It’s a very small company, already sold to another due to difficulties, and its service has been truly appalling.

I cautioned them that I would take this public and name them unless things improved. It started in December and we’re in March already. It’s only getting worse. “Your repeated lies to me and your stonewalling have left me without any option but taking this public,” I said to them yesterday. “Rest assured many colleagues and clients of yours are reading this. Tomorrow I shall name your company in public and release telephone recordings to show your utterly poor record as a company, including the lies. This will be only the start.”

They didn’t respond. They never respond. I did this patiently and politely for months already. The above is an escalation in tone.

So who’s behind this company? Not many people and public records show a volatile board with many resignations. It was put up for sale 5 years ago or just over a year after Sirius had moved funds into it (after Sirius apparently silently plundered all the older pensions — the subject of further verification these days, maybe even an impeding class action lawsuit).

As it turns out, NOW: Pensions is considered dodgy; according to Wikipedia (after many edits, some of which controversial): “During the three years leading up to June 30, 2017 Now:Pensions achieved a 2.8 percent annualized return, which was significantly less than the returns achieved by almost all of its competitors during the same time.[1] In November 2017 the Pensions Regulator fined the trustees of Now:Pensions £50,000 for administration problems. Followed by a fine for £20,000 in February 2018.[1][2] In February 2019 The Cardano Group acquired Now:Pensions from ATP[3] after Now:Pensions ran into multiple administration problems and years of poor performance.[1]”

So they already got fined for breaches. Only less than a year before the fines Sirius chose this company. How come? And where did the money go?

I’ve already cautioned former colleagues about this and if this is representative of the state of the “pension industry”, then we’re all in deep quicksand and generally in trouble. Based on recent articles in the media, more and more people nowadays realise they’re affected.

In the case of NOW: Pensions, maybe they realise that some of the money that they possess is linked to fraudsters and they’d rather protect the fraudsters than do what’s right. We’ll release some audio soon.