Scottish Widows Limited · DRN-6133556

The complaint Miss E complains about system issues, customer service, data handling, fund performance and fees in relation to a personal pension she holds with Scottish Widows Limited (‘SW’). She says these matters have caused her financial loss, distress and inconvenience. What happened Miss E has a personal pension with SW. She says she stopped contributing to this pension in around 2013 when she left the UK to live overseas. In 2020, Miss E successfully registered for SW’s online services. In May 2023, Miss E messaged SW via its online portal asking for a copy of her annual statement and information about what funds her pension was invested in and their performance, as she wanted to compare this to what else was available in the market. The same day, Miss E messaged SW again to say that looking into it more, she was very concerned about the performance of her pension funds as she thought her pension should be worth much more than it was. Soon after, Miss E complained to SW about this. SW’s June 2023 final response letter set out what Miss E’s pension was invested in and its value, and it didn’t uphold her complaint about fund performance. But it said it hadn’t responded as quickly as it should have to the portal messages she’d sent in May 2023, so it posted her a £50 cheque as compensation for this. In July 2025, Miss E complained to SW about the performance of her pension funds, that it hadn’t told her she could switch to a lower fee fund with SW, that its systems and processes were barriers that deterred fund switches, and that it had posted annual pension statements to her old addresses. And she added that the £50 cheque it had sent her in 2023 had been unbankable where she lived. While SW was looking into Miss E’s complaint, it provided her with fund switch forms and said it would pay the £50 by bank transfer if she provided her account details. Miss E completed and returned the fund switch forms and the switch was made in July 2025. Soon after, SW issued its final response to her complaint, rejecting it. Unhappy with this, Miss E referred her complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Broadly, Miss E’s position in this complaint is that SW has breached the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’) and various of the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules and regulations because, in summary: • SW mishandled her data by posting annuals statements to her old addresses despite her updating her address via its portal. Many statements never reached her, but by chance her old landlord passed her the 2025 statement which showed her pension’s continued decline. • SW should’ve told her she could switch funds. This wouldn’t have constituted financial advice as it would only have been a factual disclosure of options. But SW instead allowed her pension value to be eroded by high fees and poor performance.

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• SW’s portal was inadequate in various ways, including not giving acknowledgements when information was updated or uploaded. And SW had ignored the messages she sent via the portal and never sent her anything via it. • There were issues regarding SW’s £50 cheque, including that it had been unbankable. • SW had placed unreasonable barriers that deterred her from switching funds earlier, in the form of postal forms, long phone queues and contradictory requirements. • SW had caused her inconvenience by having to repeatedly contact and chase it. And it had caused her stress, frustration and concern about her pension’s value, whether it held accurate data for her and where the annual statements may have ended up. • Miss E explained how she wanted SW to put things right for her, including compensation for her financial loss, providing information and explanations in relation to its systems and her data, changes to its portal and communications, acknowledging its mishandling of her complaint, and an apology for saying that providing factual fund options would have constituted financial advice. For its part, SW’s position at that time was broadly that: • It wasn’t responsible for Miss E’s funds not being switched sooner. It couldn’t have pointed out SW funds with lower fees, as this could be construed as financial advice which it wasn’t allowed to give. • It didn’t have any record of Miss E updating her addresses prior to July 2025. It had posted statements to the addresses it held for her at the relevant times. • The statements had showed Miss E’s pension’s value and fund information. And she could’ve called it or visited its portal at any time to obtain similar information. • There weren’t unreasonable barriers to switching funds. It accepted fund switch requests by letter, email, telephone and the downloadable form on its website. And the list of available funds and how to switch funds was on its website. • In the call it had with Miss E during her 2023 complaint, she’d agreed to payment by cheque. And it would pay this by bank transfer if she provided her account details. • Excluding the recent fund switch, the performance of her pension funds was in line with market performance, with half her funds outperforming the benchmark. Her pension’s performance had been affected by global and political events, but had still grown significantly. • Fees were taken from the entire funds themselves rather than Miss E’s individual pension, so there would be potentially lower unit prices rather than any deduction from Miss E’s pension itself. And the fees were made clear in Miss E’s statements and on its website. In August 2025, Miss E complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office (‘ICO’) about SW’s portal not capturing her address updates since 2020 and SW sending statements to old addresses. Via the ICO, Miss E also made a data subject access request (‘DSAR’) to SW. In November 2025 SW issued its final response letter to the issues Miss E had raised with the ICO. It said it had received and actioned the address and beneficiary updates she made in May 2023, February 2024 and July 2025 via the portal, so its records had been correct. But its system hadn’t sent her acknowledgements of her updates as it should have, so it would pay her £150 compensation for this inconvenience if she provided her bank details. In December 2025, Miss E complained to SW that the DSAR response it had sent her had been lost in the post because SW had used inadequate packaging and an unsecure delivery method. SW didn’t uphold that complaint but accepted that it hadn’t yet paid her the £150 compensation offered in November 2025 and set out how it would put this right. Still

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unhappy, Miss E referred that complaint to our Service and we are dealing with it separately, so I won’t be considering that complaint or making any findings about it in this decision. An Investigator at our Service explained that our Service couldn’t consider the merits of Miss E’s 2023 complaint because it hadn’t been referred to us within the relevant time limit rules. That we couldn’t consider her concerns about the £50 cheque because complaint handling didn’t fall within our jurisdiction. And that having considered the complaint Miss E made in July 2025, he thought SW wasn’t responsible for any poor performance or lack of fund switches in relation to her pension, and didn’t do anything wrong regarding fees. That there wasn’t enough evidence to say SW failed to capture her address updates. And that it wasn’t in our Service’s remit to tell firms like SW how their systems and processes should operate. But in any case he didn’t think any portal issue had prevented Miss E from taking action, as SW had provided alternative ways for her to seek information and make changes. Miss E disagreed with the Investigator, saying in summary: • SW wrongly sending sensitive statements to old addresses for four years meant she was denied the information necessary to assess the performance of her pension. She couldn’t have switched funds because she wasn’t receiving statements showing how poor the fund was and she couldn’t switch via SW’s portal as it was ‘broken’. • It wasn’t fair to expect her, as an overseas customer, to rely on unreliable international post or time zone restricted call centers. This created barriers to her taking action. • She wasn’t asking our Service to redesign SW’s portal, but to find that SW’s failures caused her to lose visibility of her pension for four years which directly prevented her from taking action sooner, and that SW’s failures meant it had been sending her sensitive personal data out for anyone to open. • It wasn’t reasonable to put the onus on her to prove she’d updated her addresses on the portal, as she didn’t have access to SW’s logs. SW not having records of the portal address updates she made wasn’t proof she’d not made them, given SW controlled the logs and the accuracy of its system was in dispute. And SW had refused to provide its portal activity logs. • After the ICO’s involvement, SW acknowledged and fixed the system issues. It had also offered her £150 compensation, which it hadn’t yet paid. • SW’s records only started updating properly after she complained to us and the ICO in late 2025. If her old landlord hadn’t passed the 2025 annual statement to her, she’d still be unaware her address updates hadn’t been captured. It was reasonable for her to trust a portal update; if she believed her address was updated online and SW’s portal showed that as being the case, there was no reason for her to phone SW for information she assumed was being sent to her correctly. SW’s system failure itself caused harm by denying her statements and visibility of her pension, separate from any fund switching issue. • She didn’t have any real choice but to keep this pension with SW, as transferring to a qualifying recognised overseas pension scheme was prohibitively expensive and she couldn’t switch to alternative UK funds as she was not UK-resident. But the Investigator didn’t change his view. As agreement couldn’t be reached, this complaint has been passed to me for a decision. What I’ve decided – and why Preliminary point - jurisdiction

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The Investigator who previously looked at this complaint explained to both parties why he thought our Service couldn’t consider the merits of Miss E’s 2023 complaint because it hadn’t been referred to us within the relevant six-month time limit rule, and couldn’t consider her concerns about the £50 cheque because complaint handling was not a regulated activity. And I note that neither party has disputed what the Investigator said there. Since that’s not in dispute, I don’t think it’s necessary for me to set out my findings on these points in detail, except to say that I have myself independently considered whether these matters fall within our jurisdiction. And having done so, I have reached the same conclusions as the Investigator and for the same reasons – that our Service can’t consider the merits of her 2023 complaint or her concerns about the £50 cheque. But I’m satisfied that the other points Miss E raised in her July 2025 complaint fall within our Service’s jurisdiction and so I’ve gone on to consider the merits of these, which I’ll turn to. The merits of Miss E’s July 2025 complaint I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. I’d like to acknowledge that both parties have provided a great deal of comments and evidence in relation to this complaint, and I’d like to thank them for this and reassure them that I’ve carefully considered everything provided. But my decision, either in the background or in my findings, won’t set out or address every point made or every piece of evidence. That’s deliberate; while I mean no discourtesy, my decision will instead only set out and address what I see to be relevant in reaching a fair and reasonable outcome to this complaint against SW. I’ve taken into account relevant law and regulations, Regulator’s rules, guidance and standards and codes of practice, and what I consider to have been good industry practice at the time. This includes the Principles for Businesses (‘PRIN’) and the Conduct of Business Sourcebook (‘COBS’), which Miss E has pointed to. And where the evidence is incomplete, inconclusive or contradictory, I reach my conclusions on the balance of probabilities – that is, what I think is more likely than not to have happened based on the available evidence and the wider surrounding circumstances. Having done so, I’m not upholding this complaint. I know Miss E feels very strongly about this matter and that this won’t be the outcome she wants. But I’ll explain my reasons. Address updates and SW’s online portal Miss E has made submissions about SW’s portal, systems and processes not being adequate. And I acknowledge Miss E says she’s not asking our Service to redesign SW’s portal. But for completeness, I’d like to be clear that it’s not our Service’s role to evaluate how a firm’s wider systems and processes do or should operate. Instead, our role is to investigate the particular circumstances of individual complaints to determine if the firm has made an error, and if so, how to put things right for that individual consumer. So that is what I’ll do here. Looking at Miss E’s individual complaint, I appreciate she is adamant that she updated her addresses on SW’s portal, and I don’t doubt her sincerity. Miss E says the circumstances mean it’s unfair to put the burden of proof about that on her. To be clear, our Service has asked SW for its portal activity logs since 2020 in relation to Miss E, but it says it doesn’t have the facility to obtain this information. Miss E thinks I should draw adverse inferences from this but, as I’ve explained, where the evidence is incomplete, inconclusive or

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contradictory, I reach my conclusions on the balance of probabilities – that is, what I think is more likely than not to have happened. And having considered this matter, I don’t think I have enough evidence to say it’s more likely than not that SW failed to action any portal address updates Miss E made. Miss E referred the disputed address updates to the ICO and says that following the ICO’s involvement, SW acknowledged and fixed the system issues and offered her £150 compensation. However, I’ve seen that SW’s November 2025 final response in which it addressed that matter says that its portal and systems did capture her address updates and her records were always correct - but the problem had been that it hadn’t sent her any acknowledgement of her requests as it should have done. So the evidence is that even after the involvement of the ICO, SW maintains that its systems captured her address updates and I’ve not been provided with evidence of any findings by the ICO to the contrary. Further, I note Miss E also suggests that she’d believed the address updates had been made as SW’s portal had showed that as being the case. So on balance, I’m not persuaded that SW failed to capture and action the address updates Miss E provided via the portal. Visibility of Miss E’s pension Miss E says SW has denied her the information necessary to assess the performance of her pension, that its failures caused her to lose visibility of her pension for four years, and that she couldn’t have switched funds because she wasn’t receiving statements showing how poor the current funds were. But I don’t agree, because it’s clear she had access to at least some information about her pension in 2023 and the evidence is that she was also able to access information about her pension’s value online. It appears Miss E was receiving statements prior to the start of the disputed address updates, because she’s told us SW had been sending statements to old addresses for four years – she’s not said that she’d never received any statements. And she’s told us there was no reason for her to phone SW for information she assumed was being sent to her correctly. But if there came a time, as Miss E argues, when she stopped receiving annual statements at her new addresses, it’s reasonable to think that she would have contacted SW to query why that was. I accept Miss E’s portal message to SW in May 2023 asked for a copy of her statement, as well as information about what funds her pension was invested in and their performance. But her message said this was because she wanted to compare this to what else was available in the market; it doesn’t say it’s because she hadn’t received that statement in the first place. And she messaged SW again only 37 minutes later to say, “So looking more into this I’m extremely concerned about the performance of this fund and what the hell Scottish Widows has been doing over the past 10 years. It should be worth significantly more than this. I want the relevant documentation sent through immediately.” So it’s clear that at that time, Miss E had access to information about her pension that she’d ‘looked more into’ and which had caused her to be concerned about its growth. And I note that in the video Miss E has provided of her ‘walking through’ her SW portal account, I can see that while she was not able to open ‘documents’, she was able to repeatedly view a screen showing the total value of her SW pension and was also able to view the ‘policy’ screen for her pension which included a drop-down section titled ‘Investments’. I also note that in this video, Miss E says she’d realised by logging in to the portal how poorly her pension had been performing. For these reasons, I can’t agree that SW caused her to lose visibility of this pension.

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Unreasonable barriers to fund switches As I’ve already explained, I’m not persuaded SW failed to capture and action the address updates Miss E provided via the portal, and I can’t agree SW caused her to lose visibility of her pension. So I don’t think these things meant she couldn’t switch her pension funds. Miss E believes SW should have told her she could switch funds, in particular to a lower fee fund within SW. But to be clear, SW’s responsibility here was to administer Miss E’s pension in line with the investment funds she’d chosen. So SW wasn’t responsible for monitoring those investments or their performance on her behalf, or for advising her about what was best for her. So while I know Miss E disagrees, it was not for SW to point out a fund that might be cheaper for her – and it’s not unreasonable for SW to be concerned that it doing so could perhaps have been considered to be giving Miss E advice in light of her particular circumstances. Instead, it was for Miss E to regularly review her investments, with the support of a financial adviser if necessary. As I say, Miss E was clearly concerned in 2023 about her pension’s investments and growth. And I’ve seen that SW’s website at that time, which it included a link to in its 2023 final response letter, set out explanatory information about pensions, reviewing investments, available funds, things to think about when making fund switches and how to make fund switches. Miss E also says it’s not fair to expect her as an overseas customer to rely on unreliable international post or time zone restricted call centres for getting fund information or making fund switches. But as I say, relevant information was available to her online whenever it best suited her. And while telephoning and emailing SW may not have always been as convenient as Miss E might have wanted, I’ve seen that she was able to communicate with SW in these ways. Taking all this into account, I don’t think SW placed unreasonable barriers to Miss E switching funds. Fund performance As I’ve said, Miss E’s 2023 complaint about fund performance up to that point was referred to our Service too late for us to be able to consider its merits. But in July 2025, she complained again about fund performance, and that complaint is within our jurisdiction. So here, I’m considering the performance of Miss E’s pension from the time of her 2023 complaint to the time of her 2025 complaint. I do appreciate that ultimately, Miss E is disappointed with the performance of her pension prior to switching funds in July 2025. But I must explain that fund performance not being as hoped or expected, or not turning out as well as other investments might have, isn’t in itself evidence that something has gone wrong. And I don’t think that Miss E’s pension not overall growing as she might have expected is due to any act or omission by SW. I say that because between her 2023 complaint and her 2025 complaint, the performance of the funds her pension was previously invested was overall in line with comparable benchmarks. Fees Miss E has suggested that SW’s fund fees were too high, as she says these eroded her pension and that there were funds with lower fees. But as SW has explained, the funds fees are not deducted directly from Miss E’s pension but rather included in the fund prices.

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I’ve seen that the 2025 statement set out the annual fund charges and so I think it’s likely that the statements SW would’ve sent Miss E in previous years would also have included this information. I’ve also seen that fund charges have historically been available, and still are, on SW’s website. So I’m satisfied SW took reasonable steps to let Miss E know abut the applicable fund charges. And I’m not persuaded these fund charges were out of step with those charged on similar products from other providers. In summary Taking everything into account, I’m not upholding this complaint or asking SW to do anything further here, though I realise this will be very disappointing to Miss E. I note that Miss E thinks she has no real choice to but to keep this pension with SW. Deciding what to do with a pension can of course be a complex matter, but it is open to Miss E to seek independent financial advice about her pension provision, if that’s something she thinks she would find useful. My final decision For the reasons set out, my decision is that I do not uphold this complaint. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Miss E to accept or reject my decision before 17 April 2026. Ailsa Wiltshire Ombudsman

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