Service & Support

Maintaining service for our customers, advisers and stakeholders

Here you’ll find updates on our service, how we’re adapting our products to a changing environment and the best ways to get in touch with our teams across the UK.

Service update

We remain open for business and service levels are operating normally

There are some simple things you can do to help us at the moment. Your support will help keep our phone lines free for our most vulnerable customers and help us deliver the best service possible:

Contact us by e-mail instead of calling - this will allow our service teams to prioritise vulnerable customers and any urgent issues.

Send forms electronically - documents can be scanned and emailed instead of posting, encrypted where appropriate.

Remote working - In line with government advice, the majority of our employees are working from home. This means although many are now working remotely, we can still meet your needs.

Service teams are working from our offices where it is practical and safe to do so. For example, dealing with post and paperwork, or accessing secure systems that cannot be made available remotely. To limit risk of infection, fewer employees will be in work at any one time and we have introduced additional sanitary and cleaning measures.

Processing of Death Certificates

Any circumstances where only a copy of the death certificate can be provided will be dealt with on a case by case basis. Where possible, to mitigate any risk, we will use an external source to validate the information being provided to avoid causing undue stress to the customer.

Our approach may vary due to the varying risk profile of our products for example:

Annuities – Following notification of the first annuitant’s death payments will cease. If the annuity is to continue to be paid to a second annuitant or under a guarantee we will undertake our usual process undertaking additional checks and using external verification tools where possible to validate the information. If original or certified copy documents are not available these would be dealt with on a case by case basis.
Investments – Due to the greater risk in paying the monies out to the customer, we will consider each request on a case by case basis. If it is not possible to obtain an original or certified copy of the death certificate we will undertake additional checks and where possible use external verification tools to validate the information and assess the claim.
Group Protection – Where it is not possible to obtain an original or certified copy of the death certificate we would use the external tools available to us to validate the information provided and consider each claim on a case by case basis.
Home Finance – Where it is not possible to obtain an original or certified copy of the death certificate we will use the external tools available to us to validate the information provided and consider each claim on a case by case basis.

Relevant contact details for all services can be found here.