Army Preserved Pension Fiasco

(negligence in production of OPM) That Equiniti Paymaster required overseas bank account details to be entered on an inappropriate OPM. Specifically, their OPM for Mexico requires a 3-digit Bank Code plus an Account Number of up to 34 (sic) digits to be supplied; whereas Mexican Banking Institutions (since 2004) require a single 18-digit value known as a CLABE. These are not the only errors on this OPM, and its seriously erratic nature indicates that no effort whatever to determine the requirements has been made in its creation; nor can it ever have been checked. It should go without saying that Equiniti Paymaster must create OPMs that comply with the requirements of the host banking system and hence enable transfers to be made to it, not conjure them up according to its whims.

(mishandling original completed OPM). Although this was sent by registered post on the 8th October 2015, Equiniti Paymaster claimed that it had still not been received by the 22nd December 2015. This is highly questionable, since the AFPS Form 8 sent to Veterans UK only three days earlier (also by registered post) reached them on or before the 26th October 2015 (the date of the Award Letter). The quoted delivery time for items sent by registered post from Mexico to the UK is 12 to 20 days, and recent experience gives no reason to doubt this (the extreme delays of around three months have been with post received from the UK). It may not be possible to prove this charge; but most probably this delayed the application by about two months. A scan of the original completed OPM was sent as an email attachment on 23rd December 2015 to replace the original lost OPM.

(negligent and/or intransigent rejection of replacement OPM) That, on 11th January 2016, Equiniti Paymaster rejected the OPM sent by email to replace the original, on the invalid grounds that the putative 3-digit Bank Code had not been supplied. The efforts that the complainant had made to work around the defective OPM had apparently been ignored. These included an explanation that not only provided additional information in connection with the requested Bank Code and Account Number, but also stated that numerous bank transfers had been received from the UK on the basis of the details supplied. On the basis of this, any reasonable organisation would have both made payment, and reviewed and corrected the OPM. Equiniti Paymaster made no payment until 18th April 2016, and to date has still not corrected the online OPM.

(refusal to make due payments on false grounds) That Equiniti Paymaster has made no payment of amounts due, even though they could have done so on receipt of the OPM. This is presumably a consequence of the unreasonable rejection of the OPM. Although the information supplied on the OPM was correct and would have enabled payment to be made, they clearly made no attempt to do so. The complainant has received numerous funds transfers from at least three sources in the UK over a period of ten years using the details supplied, without any issues ever having been raised; only Equiniti Paymaster has failed to make payment. For several months, no payment whatever was received from Equiniti Paymaster (with the exception of several unwanted UK cheques that they should have known could not be presented in Mexico).

(prolonged intransigence and unresponsiveness) That, following their rejection of the OPM on 11th January 2016, Equiniti Paymaster has made effective communication with them impossible. Although the complainant has made every attempt to further explain the requirements for Mexico in order to persuade Equiniti Paymaster of the veracity of his statements, no explanation or any other information has been received from them, after waiting for many weeks. Indeed, Equiniti Paymaster appears to have been deliberately obstructive in denying the use of email. This situation has persisted even after efforts made by Veterans UK to liaise with Equiniti Paymaster and persuade them to communicate directly with the complainant by email; no further communication or payment was received by the complainant from Equiniti Paymaster until radio silence was unexpectedly broken on 8th April 2016.

(failure to correct currently-available OPM) That Equiniti Paymaster failed to review and correct the online OPM (and presumably any sent by post) when it was clearly necessary to do so. This should have been done when the completed OPM sent by the complainant was first received (probably late October 2015). His subsequent clear statements on the requirements for Mexico went unheeded, and to date the online OPM has still not been updated. The effect of this failure is to leave others exposed to the same problems that the complainant has experienced.