According to the firm, when it is notified of a client’s passing and has received a death certificate, it sends out a pack which includes valuations of the accounts, along with the relevant forms required to administer the accounts.
As pensions with Hargreaves Lansdown are held in trust and outside of a client’s estate, it falls to the firm as the trustees to make the decision as to who should benefit from the account using information that is provided to it.
The trustees review the request for information form which is sent as part of the above pack along with the clients will, marriage certificate and expression of wishes if applicable.
According to the firm it initially received the death certificate and the above mentioned pack was sent out.
However, Hargreaves Lansdown said it was “disappointed to learn” that this took longer than it should have to be sent.
In addition to this, once it had received the request for information form which was included in the pack from the client there was also a delay in passing the information to the firm's trustees which it has apologised for.
Once the above information was reviewed by trustees, Hargreaves Lansdown said on July 20 2023, it sent the relevant form to the client that would allow her to express to the firm how she would like to access her late husband’s pension funds.
Hargreaves Lansdown said in its letter: “We did not receive the form back from you within a timeframe we would usually expect and therefore we contacted you twice to ensure we could proceed with your instructions.
“We then received a letter of authority signed by yourself giving authority to IFS Financial Management along with an instruction to sell the investments held in [the deceased’s] pension. I was pleased to see this was instructed and we sent you confirmation of this as expected.”
Although this granted Hargreaves Lansdown the authority to sell the investments, it said it still hadn't received the 'settlement of benefits' form that would allow it to start the process of transferring the assets into the widow's name.
It said it contacted the client directly to notify her of this twice and received a letter from Miles in January making it aware that the client wanted the pension to be transferred to the new provider.
"Whilst we are conscious this may have caused frustration at the time, in order to achieve this transfer we informed you that you would first need to have the assets transferred into your name with Hargreaves Lansdown. Following which, a new settlement of benefits form was sent to proceed with your transfer request.
