TONY HETHERINGTON: My pension and lump sum were hacked back... just as I retired

Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday's ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.

J.M. writes: I retired after getting a final quote from Willis Towers Watson (WTW) for my Rockwell Automation pension.

It told me to expect a lump sum of £146,000 and an annual pension of £22,198. However, the lump sum I ended up receiving was about £5,000 less and my annual pension was only £21,685.

WTW has said that it is sorry, and that it had made a mistake, and has offered me £500 compensation.

Tony Hetherington replies: You contacted me after finding that in July I reported on an earlier mistake by this same huge international company – Willis Towers Watson – that administers the pension schemes for lots of UK companies.

Then, WTW had written to a Lloyds Bank pensioner who retired seven years earlier, claiming it had overpaid his lump sum and monthly pension and demanding £95,000.

WTW wanted full details of his finances before it would make a compensation offer. It even suggested he could sell his car and give them the proceeds.

I asked why WTW's failure should not be regarded as negligence by a rich multi-national company that now expected a pensioner to foot the bill. And in the end it backed down and withdrew its claim completely.

Yet here we are in almost the same situation. And this time, WTW got its sums wrong repeatedly.

It first told you that your pension lump sum was £146,547, and you agreed to this and went ahead with your retirement.

WTW then cut this to £139,636. When you protested, it said it had made an error and would add £1,016 to the lump sum, only to admit just three days later that it had made another mistake, so the top-up was increased to £1,762. This made the final figure £141,398.

I questioned WTW about its incompetence, and you filed a formal appeal to the trustees of the Rockwell Automation pension scheme.

Their decision was that they are only obliged to pay the correct amounts and not any mistaken amounts, but trust chairman Brian Watson did say they would boost the compensation offer to £1,500.

And Watson took a swipe at WTW, saying: 'As a result of the errors encountered the trustees are undertaking a review of WTW's processes, and changes will be made with the aim of preventing similar errors in the future.'

I hope this means that the £1,500 would come out of WTW's pocket, and not from the pension fund.

You are now taking your complaint to the Pensions Ombudsman, so there is unlikely to be any fresh decision for some months.

Meanwhile, the scheme trustees told me: 'The trustees are very sorry that the service received by the member fell below the standard expected and normally provided by the scheme's administrator.'

This apology was given to me by David Booth, the Leeds-based secretary to the Rockwell pension trustees – though his real employer is actually WTW, the company paid to administer the pension scheme. So we have a WTW employee handing out an apology for poor service by his own employer.

If I were running Rockwell, I think I'd be looking for a new firm to run my pension scheme.

The man behind an investment company in Nottinghamshire has been charged by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with operating an unauthorised business and dishonestly misleading investors.

John Burford, from Mansfield, is the owner and sole director of Financial Trading Strategies Limited, which provided daily investment tips as well as offering three managed funds.

The FCA alleges that he recruited more than 100 investors and is suspected of generating over £1million. The regulator claims that he misrepresented the value of the funds he operated and the amount of investors' money lost.

I warned against Burford in August when I reported that, despite the FCA investigating him, his Tramline Traders website was still inviting new subscribers for his tips.

When I questioned him, he said nothing about where investors' funds had gone.

The 85-year-old, who has a PhD in physics and worked at Nasa, will appear in court in London on May 23.

If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY or email [email protected]. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.