DRO Trap

I started contributing R800 per month to a DRO v1 in 2008. I was impressed by Discovery’s integration philosophy and decided to maximize it by joining Health, vitality, Insure, Life and Bank. In 2010 I started a business and my income increased substantially so I increased my DRO contribution. By 2016 I was contributing R30,000 per month. My wife joined me in the business, and we decided to get a 2nd DRO for her, and to split our household contribution R15,000 each. We consulted our broker and a Discovery liaison who gladly drew up the servicing quote and the change was made. The next time I checked my online statement, I had been given a R217,000 penalty against my accrued LPO. I was charged an early exit fee of R13,000 and my accrued Fee payback which was only 2 years from being paid was halved. I was shocked and my Discovery liaison was as shocked as I was, he insisted it was a mistake. Turns out you can increase your contribution, but you cannot reduce it without severe penalties. We felt this was unfair because we did not take any business away from Discovery in the transaction. We increased it because we took out new life cover for my wife. We were told that it is the rules, and we were not allowed to reverse the decision. My wife and I continued to contribute to our DRO’s and we currently pay a collective R45,000 because of compulsory annual escalations. Our business has taken a knock from COVID and we can no longer afford contributions at this level. We want to reduce our contributions to R20,000 (R10,000 each) but this will mean a collective penalty to our LPO’s of R715,000 and R51,300 early exit fee, so we are completely trapped. We have 22 years to retirement; with the compulsory escalations our contributions will become completely un-affordable. We are completely disillusioned by this because had I not increased my contributions from the initial R800/month I would not be in the situation, after 13 years at a 10% escalation my contributions would be about R3,000. Ironically, investing as much as possible for as long as possible in this instance has been my greatest pitfall. I could have contributed to my DRO for 40 years and lost the entire LPO 1 year before retirement by not being able to afford the contributions. This does not seem right. I remain a committed Discovery client after 13 years with Health, Insure, Life, vitality, and Bank. Our household Discovery Debit orders exceed R65,000 per month. We don't want to move but would relish the opportunity to speak to a senior decision maker, to possibly assist and find a mutually beneficial reasonable solution. We have tried a number of internal avenues and always end up talking to foot soldiers that effectively leave you with more questions than answers. I have all the evidence to substantiate everything mentioned above.

We have approached Hello Peter as a last resort, please assist.