The sad demise of a once trusted company

I have been a client of Old Mutual for 29 years, diligently paying premiums for my pension product. During that time I moved from Namibia to South Africa. OM did not have an issue collecting the premiums from my SA bank account. Now that my policy has matured and I want to make a withdrawal and re-invest the balance, the run around has started.

Firstly, I approached Namibia and tried to get information related to a withdrawal and a reinvestment in South Africa. None of the official contact methods worked.

I then tried using a financial advisor in Namibia, the message I received from OM during that attempt was that they would not pay out unless I had a Namibian bank account and tax number. They could not see past the fact that I was no longer living in Namibia and I had no means to initiate or qualify for those. When trying to contact them via phone, I get attitude from an agent and they refuse to give me the contact details of a person that can assist with this, so I doubt that I will get joy from them. This person even told me that I would need to fly to Namibia and sort a bank account and tax number.

Much searching later I found that on their website they acknowledge and support policy transfers as they understand that people move. So I went to a local branch, Greenstone mall, saw the financial advisor, explained the situation and they confirmed that I could perform the transfer as long as I completed the necessary documentation, which I did. This was 2 months ago and I am yet to receive any form of communication from the financial advisor or OM confirming my application. I have to hunt down the advisor each time and I get a nonsensical response of "these things can take more than 6 months and I must be patient, but they will call me with feedback and updates". I am yet to get one of those.

I have been on this journey for 10 months now and I think its going to be even longer before I see any form of result.

For a company with such a long standing brand name in South Africa, you are clearly throwing it away. It is evident from Hellopeter that the majority of people do not have a good experience with this company and they, Old Mutual, simply do not care. I have no doubt that I going simply receive one of those AI generated messages of "sorry you are having a bad experience, we will investigate" which we all know leads to nothing. I think my only option is legal action to get my money from them.