Claim B226472B

I have been dealing with a claim on behalf of my employee since December 2015. The DataFactory contacted my employee to inform her that her late Husband had a pension fund with Old Mutual (Shane Wessels contacted us) He gave us the necessary information to submit the claim. My employee went to the high court and received a Letter of authority. There was no stipulation that the amount and the fund name was to be present on the Letter of Authority. We submitted all the necessary information (ID of Beneficiary, ID of deceased, Claim form and Letter of authority) A few months later she was contacted to open an account for her son as he is a beneficiary based on the records, which she did, however when contacting Old Mutual her son was not listed as a beneficiary. She was also asked to go to SARS to ensure the appropriate documentation was sent to them, which she did. After a few months of back and forth with documents etc I asked the Data Factory as to the status of the claim, they then informed me that the Letter of Authority was supposed to have the fund name and the amount which is to be paid out. However when asked for an amount the call center agent did not want to provide this to me. Again I was pushed from pillar to post. My employee then went to the High Court in Krugersdorp, as the call center agent advised that she can get a Letter of authority from there instead of paying more than R300 to travel to town. They turned her away and sent her to the High Court in Johannesburg. When there they did not want to add the fund to the Letter of authority. I had to then email the high count and write a letter for the Letter of Authority to include the amount of the fund (which I then later got from a supervisor). Finally we got the letter of Authority and it was sent to the Data Factory and they confirmed from their side all of the documents were submitted and compete. A few weeks later I asked for the status of the claim and they advised me that the I need to contact Old Mutual. On phoning Old Mutual, they informed me that all the information was missing on theyor system. Surely the Data Factory should have sent all of the information to Old Mutual. I had to then re-send everything again to Old Mutual. A few weeks I phoned in to ask for the status of the claim and They said a tax directive was sent to SARS and it should take 48 hours and then payment can be made. After two weeks I have had no feedback and when phoning old mutual today again I find out that the tax directive did not send to SARS via the automated route. The consultant kindly escalated the matter and requested the tax directive to be submitted manually. From the time that we submitted the claim my employee and I have been sent from place to place, wasting our time and money on unnecessary processes and inefficiencies within the call centers/data exchanges. I wrote a complaint letter to old Mutual and the Data Factory two weeks ago, and I have had no response whatsoever from either company. Please can the processes, staff training, efficiency etc be streamlined. It has been extremely frustrating dealing with this issue over the last 1.5 years. My employee would not be able to complete this process without assistance, which is a disadvantage to her and all other people who do not have technology on their fingertips and a supportive claims process.

Kind regards,

Nadeya McGee