Inappropriate question from pension provider

[Sultan1972]

Hi.
I’m in the process of accessing my pension early, on the basis of ill health.

Having submitted doctors reports etc, I was also asked to submit 3 months recent bank statements - to illustrate I was not working/receiving a salary.

However, the provider has now started asking questions about transactions LEAVING my account such as “why did you transfer x amount to that account”…….

Is this really necessary? Surely this is an invasion of privacy? Why would this even matter?

 

[DannyBoyD]

If you are required to establish that you are not working, and you are doing so by means of your bank statements; I don't believe you can refuse to answer the questions & still get your desired outcome.

To put it more simply - you want the pension, you need to answer the questions.

 

[time to plan]

Hi.
I’m in the process of accessing my pension early, on the basis of ill health.

Having submitted doctors reports etc, I was also asked to submit 3 months recent bank statements - to illustrate I was not working/receiving a salary.

However, the provider has now started asking questions about transactions LEAVING my account such as “why did you transfer x amount to that account”…….

Is this really necessary? Surely this is an invasion of privacy? Why would this even matter?

If you are concerned, have you asked why they need to know?

 

[Dr Strangelove]

However, the provider has now started asking questions about transactions LEAVING my account such as “why did you transfer x amount to that account”…….

It could be indicative of other income being obscured deliberately.

Of course you are not doing this, but they have to check for fraud.

 

[Horatio]

Ask them why.

 

[Clamball]

I think ask them why. If the sole purpose of looking at your bank account was to see money going in, then I would have blacked out all money going out, they don’t need or require that.

But now that they have seen it, they may have a legitimate concern that you have another account in another bank and they would like to check if you are being paid into that. Especially if you labelled the transaction as - “going to secret income account”

But seriously bankers are so used to looking at income and outgoings that they can instantly summarise you financial status by a quick scan of you statements. I recall it happened to me in AIB once when we were applying for credit. She has no questions she had it all figured out by that quick scan.