The company’s victims include blind people

Saturday:

Sunday:

Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ turn out to have gone further than the pension fraud; according to a new message, the company withheld payment to staff that did a lot of work and we’ve seen even worse “wage theft” before (at one point the company was taken to court over it, almost exactly a decade ago if not many times more)

Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ were brought to the attention of NOW: Pensions a long time ago. But it’s still failing to fulfil a simple promise or, in other words, it lied (3 people, including a manager, lied).

A few days ago we shared a response from a manager at NOW: Pensions. But nothing was sent by post.

“I hope this helps to settle your concerns,” he said, but he did not actually do what his colleague, another manager, said would happen. “Please send the full letter, as promised, to 1) my wife 2) myself,” I said, “as promised by [redacted name]
as promised by [another redacted name]
as promised by [manager's redacted name]

several times since February. We need this obligation in writing.”

“To make matters worse, the company is trying to seed doubt, gaslight many victims, and make veiled threats against people who speak out facts.”I already have several of things on record (audio), demonstrating the promises were made. Those were never fulfilled, and very much by intention. The state of the pension “industry” isn’t good and their handling of pension fraud is rather revealing. Sirius found itself a convenient accomplice.

To make matters worse, the company is trying to seed doubt, gaslight many victims, and make veiled threats (by proxy) against people who speak out facts. NOW: Pensions has not replied to my message yet, but it’s a holiday here.

Even the CEO left last month!

Summary: Amid inflation, in light of Sirius workers leaving in droves, salaries have been cut even further (they’re looking to pay GNU/Linux engineers as little as 20,000 a year for an overnight job, including weekends and holidays!); of course many won’t know some of that sum will moreover been stolen (embezzlement) under the guise of “pension”

Bonus: The current pension provider has been put on notice regarding pension fraud at Sirius ‘Open Source’ . This has been escalated to the top management there. New letter below.

Dear Roy,

NOW: Pensions Trust (“the Scheme”)

Thank you for your time and patience allowing us to investigate your concerns, we very much regret that it has been necessary for you to contact us with your concerns.

Our understanding of your complaint is your concern that your NOW Pension is not safe due to your previous boss of Sirius potentially being involved in suspicious activities regarding the collection
of contributions.

It was necessary for us to refer your concerns to our compliance department; they have come back with the following information.

 

NOW: Pensions are authorised and regulated as a master trust by The Pensions Regulator (TPR). We’re one of approximately

38 master trusts approved and supervised continuously by TPR to maintain the quality of master trust providers in the UK. This means increased protection for members and their pension savings.

 

We employ a specialist company known as a
custodian, which is responsible for guarding and protecting your money. It holds your pension savings, and those of all members, under a custody agreement (which is protected
by the law) until you ask for your benefits to be paid. The money is kept in a ring-fenced account which is separate from both NOW: Pensions and the custodian’s own funds and company accounts.’’

Our custodian is
BNY Mellon, one of the world’s largest custodians. It looks after over US$30 trillion on behalf of pension schemes and other investors.

The above protection is only applied to funds that have been paid over to us.

Please also note that if you are a deferred member of the scheme ie you have stopped contributing the following charges will still apply:

• A monthly administration charge of £1.75 (£21 a year) which covers the cost of running the Scheme.
• An annual investment charge of 0.3% of the value of your savings. This covers the cost of investing your money.

However,
we won’t take any administration charges if this deduction would result in your pension savings account falling below £100.

I hope this helps to settle your concerns regarding your NOW Pension fund, as you can see from the above, they have outlined how and who is responsible for protecting your pension savings and applies to
all NOW Pensions members.

Should you consider that this does not bring the matter to a conclusion, you can request that the Trustees review the matter through the Internal Dispute Resolution Process (IDRP).

 

Please contact us or visit:

https://www.nowpensions.com/contact-us/internal-dispute-resolution-process/

 

You can also contact Money Helper for assistance:

 

Money Helper (formerly The Pensions Advisory Service)

120 Holborn, London EC1N 2TD

Telephone: 0800 011 3797 Website: https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/pensions-and-retirement

 

If you have general requests for information or guidance concerning your pension arrangements contact:

 

 

We’re here to help. If you have any questions or need information, you can call us on 0330 100 3334 from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday to Friday. Calls may be recorded and monitored for
quality purposes. When you call, please quote the reference above, your full name and National Insurance number. This will help us to help you faster.

 

You can also email us at membersupport@nowpensions.com or write to us by post. Please quote the reference above, your full name and National Insurance number in any correspondence.

Yours sincerely

Neil Morris

 

NOW: Pensions Trust Administration Team

For the record: Standard Life investigators now have several formal complaints from several different victims of Sirius pension fraud. It’s hardly surprising that remaining workers are fleeing (almost nobody is left, so the company lies about who’s there).

‘ve just checked ONS. Its site was updated faster than usual, as early as 9:30AM this morning, at least for this dataset.

The site updated at ONS:

Number of deaths for week 11:

Notice how much that grew between 2022 and 2023.

2019 was a lot better too. 2019 data for March/April:

So to summarise

2019: 10,567 deaths
2022: 10,928 deaths
2023: 12,133 deaths

They tell us the pandemic is a thing of the past. The data does not support this assertion.

Sounds familiar? Yes, Standard Life (2011-2016). Seems like a pattern…

TPR confirms end to ‘serious’ admin issues at Now Pensions

TPR forces Now Pensions to overhaul admin system after £18m failing

NOW:Pensions failed to collect £18m of contributions

Now Pensions fined for ‘long-running issues’

Summary: The above is important because of the timing. After 5+ years of pension fraud at Sirius ‘Open Source’ the company enrolled staff without paperwork/signatures and barely with any consent (in late 2016); to make matters worse, a few years ago it upped staff contribution levels without increasing its own, in effect forcing staff to send even more money (one’s own money, not the company’s) into this dubious pot with uncertain future.

They tried blaming it on outsourcing (their own)

Summary: NOW: Pensions, which is apathetic towards crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ (because it gets paid to play along), has one heck of a history when it comes to managing data; 2 years ago its customers’ data (some of it highly sensitive) was copied and posted online for all to download, at least temporarily, after a severe breach

In their own words (latest statement from Companies House):

Summary: The crimes of Sirius ‘Open Source’ are under investigation, but NOW: Pensions does not seem to care. On the phone, the manager at this pension firm said he’d send assurance letters. In his E-mail he said the same. Two of his workers had said the same for 2 months prior. They all lied. Lying is the norm there. Would you trust a pension provider such as this? If this is the norm in this sector (financial/pension ‘industry’), there’s big trouble ahead.