Alexander Forbes does not care for the losses incurred to their clients due to the bad administration of their retirement

In July 2020 I retired from my workplace and proceeded to complete all documentation to have my provident fund moved into a preservation fund. By end of August, all documentation had been submitted and to my knowledge, everything was taken care of. On the 20th of January 2021, I submitted documentation to retire and have the proceeds after my lumpsum transferred to a 3rd party Insurer. At this point, it transpired that the process of moving my fund to the preservation fund had not been completed. Alexander Forbes had to now rush to try actually complete the transfer to the preservation fund, due to their administrator’s errors on not having completed the Preservation Fund transfer 4 months ago This resulted in the funds being disinvested from the market 13 working days after the initial instruction to retire was submitted and further not paid out until a further 13 working days had passed due to further internal administration errors on their part. Due to this misadministration I missed the cut off for incomes to be paid out by the 3rd party insurer( these are funds I will never be able to recover), I had to borrow money from relatives to cover month-end costs, I lost investment returns due to the retirement being processed late and being held out of the market for 13 working days in a money market holding account at the wrong time due to their inability to process the retirement instruction timeously. I lodged a complaint with Alexander Forbes. They came back saying that there were errors on their side and they have been dealt with, but according to them, the investment return was positive for the period up until they were disinvested so no need for compensation, no matter that I lost out on income that I will never get back, the first payment, no matter that, the time the retirement decision was made took into consideration the current market position, but due to their mistake the investment was out of the market when it should have been in the market, that caused a loss in the investment, that also meant that the portion that I took out cost me more shares that what it should have, due to the market growing and my funds not being in the market. The complaints officer did not address a single one of my concerns in fact she did not even understand the issue and refused to talk to me or contact me further. They further then said if I was not happy, I must refer it to the Pension Fund Adjudicator and that was the final communication I had from them. None of my grievances were addressed, nobody apologised, and nobody even bothered to call to inform us what was happening to my money. Alexander Forbes complaints officer would rather not spend any time applying herself to the complexities of their own mismanagement and palm clients off to the grueling process of dealing with the Pension Fund Adjudicator. After 28 Years of having my retirement savings with them, this is how I was treated after supplying all documentation that was asked for from the onset. Totally unacceptable and very unprofessional