Weekly Provider Update – 5th October 2020

 

Weekly Provider Update – Monday 5th October 2020

 

The early bird catches the worm!

Having noticed a shift in provider call wait times, I decided to attack certain providers differently this week, to how I would normally do.

I rose nice and early on Monday morning, with my sole purpose being to make sure I beat the queue to Prudential’s call handlers. It reminded me of the time I tried to get tickets for ‘Harry Potter and The Cursed Child’, trying to beat the queue was the biggest battle.

Coffee freshly brewed, The clock struck 8:30am – I dialled 0808 234 0808 – it is one of the provider contact numbers that Is etched on my brain! I was greeted with the automated Prudential lady, where you have to give the plan number, client date of birth and the reason why you are calling. Having successfully negotiated through this potentially frustrating minefield (automated machines get D and B mixed up ALL of the time!), I was informed that I was in the queue, and my call would be answered shortly….. and they weren’t wrong!

 

Usually, you can be on hold for up to 40+ minutes. On this occasion, within 12 mins I had gone through security, spoke to a call handler and received a timescale.

 

If Carlsberg did Monday mornings….

How the rest have fared

There hasn’t been much change with timescales across the board. Royal London have seen an increase in timescales for Talisman Person Pension requests, which has extended slightly to 15-16 working days. Invesco, Janus Henderson and Reassure are all quoting the same timescale – 10 working days.

On the whole, the majority of providers are working to their usual timescales, albeit there has been an increase in call wait times, and we have been experiencing a delay in the postal service, which is out of the providers control. I feel we are getting closer to normality, but as always, we can only take it day by day, week by week.