The Old Mutual company is a disappointment - an essay for anyone to reconsider

This is a general complaint towards Old Mutual and the disappointment of having my retirement annuity with them.

A few weeks ago my financial adviser ceased his role of being my financial adviser. I decided to change my portfolio, however, to my dismay I realized that this is an excruciatingly pane staking process that takes longer than desired.

It is a process of back and forth emailing of documents, waiting for an eventual reply from Old Mutual. There is no dedicated consultants which you can contact to help with the process, you're application/switch documents is floating on their mailing servers for the next available person to deal with, and your calls is answered with an automatic reply "we will contact you back.."

The documents to switch funds is not properly designed and cumbersome, with the potential of Old Mutual mistakenly switching the wrong funds with the incorrect asset allocations, with no section of a summarized table that you can fill in to summarize/conclude how you would like your portfolio (with asset allocations, etc) to look after the fund switching is eventually made.

Also, Old Mutual doesn't provide any information (while in the process of switching) of capital/amounts fees that will impact your funds (or any other admin fees, or amounts) to be lost when switching out of funds that have BSR/MVA app****, etc. In one of the document they state "I am aware that a market value adjuster (MVA) has been app**** to the fund and that it will reduce the amount that I wish to switch/disinvest." They also state in their explanatory page "Old Mutual reserves the right to use its discretion in the application of the bonus formula and MVAs", which implies that you wont know in advance the amount you will loose. They are not transparent in this regard, and don't provide the amounts that will be lost upfront while you are in the process of switching.

It is a cumbersome process to manage your portfolio at Old Mutual, perhaps it is intentionally designed this way as to force one to hire one of their financial advisers. It was one of the worst mistakes I have made in my life to entrust an Insurance Investment company to manage my pension savings. I am now stuck with them because of the new Pension Funds Act 1/3 amendment.

I understand that one of the reasons Pension Funds Act 1/3 amendment was created was to protect people from spending their entire pension funds( and to limit a credit crisis in South Africa) but this has also caused Insurance Investment companies to exploit this to their selfish benefit because they know you are stuck with them either way.