PensionDanmark is changing its insurance terms and will write to all customers telling them so, after receiving censure from the country’s financial watchdog about blocking pensions mobility, it has said.
The Danish FSA (Finanstilsynet) said it had examined PensionsDanmark’s terms and communication to its members, after several members complained the labour market pension fund had refused to transfer their dormant deposits to new savings accounts with other companies.
Ulla Brøns Petersen, office manager in the Danish FSA’s consumer office, said: “We are ordering PensionDanmark to remove the unreasonable terms and to inform its customers that there are no time limits for the option of transferring its dormant savings to a new company.”
The FSA said PensionDanmark had justified the transfer refusals on the grounds that they were only possible, according to its own terms, through its “job change scheme” within 36 months after a customer changed jobs.
In a statement on the matter, the watchdog said: “Pension companies must not retain the customer on unreasonable terms, or try to persuade the customer to stay once the customer has decided to move his dormant pension to another company.”
The FSA gave PensionDanmark three official orders: to remove the unreasonable, inter-company transfer terms; to inform members of the change, so they would have the opportunity to transfer again; and to implement member requests to transfer their pension scheme without contacting them about it, unless there was a risk that they would lose significant rights in the transfer.
PensionDanmark said the authority had criticised it for warning customers about the “significant increases in the costs of moving to a receiving company,” which the pension provider said it had considered part of its “advisory obligation,” but it added that the FSA had disagreed with this.
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