Steve Webb experienced a significant underestimation of his pension value after a £68,000 transfer to a different provider, resulting in a loss of £30,000. The official value of his pension turned out to be more than £87,000, thanks to a manual recalculation and customer intervention.
I retired in September 2025 and had my pension forecast valued at £68,000 by ReAssure. I appointed a financial adviser who also obtained the same figure and a previous valuation was very similar.
I wanted to buy an annuity but when the company received the amount it only received £58,000. Apparently a mistake had been made on the three previous calculations. It was admitted a mistake had been made as a manual calculation should have been done. I went to the Financial Ombudsman which contacted ReAssure and they admitted their mistake I received £750 by way of compensation and they agreed to put the pension back to how it was in September 2025.
Steve Webb: Get in touch with your problem at pensionquestions@thisismoney.co.uk I have now received an email telling me that my manual recalculation is £26,000. I have been in touch once again with ReAssure who have said they will look into it but it will take between six and eight weeks causing further delay. I have lost all confidence in this company and do not know how on earth I can trust any of their manual calculations.
I thought if you were able to look into this for me I might get a more realistic response and find out what my pension really is. To be honest it does make me wonder how many more people are having this problem with ReAssure and manual calculations. Steve Webb replies: I can entirely understand why you have lost faith in the whole process when you have had such wildly different valuations for your pension.
As it turns out, the correct answer was actually substantially higher than any of the numbers you had seen when you first contacted me, but we will come to that later. As you know, you have a ‘defined contribution’ or ‘pot of money’ type pension.
You might suppose that it’s a relatively easy matter for your pension provider to tell you how much you have in your pot at any point in time, and that is generally true for the modern policies into which people are typically enrolled through the workplace. In this case, however, you have a policy known as a ‘unit linked’ personal pension, which you took out back in 1995.
For various reasons, the calculation of the value of this pension is not quite as straightforward. But this is still no excuse for the errors that were made. I understand that you contacted ReAssure in the summer of 2025 and this was when you were quoted around £68,000. But when the transfer went ahead in October 2025, the final value was just £58,000.
RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share HOW THIS IS MONEY CAN HELP Given the volatility of financial markets at the moment, it’s not impossible for the value of a pension to fluctuate somewhat, but this would still be a relatively large change over just two or three months to be explained purely by market movements. Quite understandably, you raised your concerns via the Financial Ombudsman and ReAssure admitted that there was an error in the original quote for which it has apologised.
It agreed to reverse the transfer and ReAssure received the money back in January 2026. However, you then received a bombshell letter telling you that your pension was worth just £26,000 – well under half of the original quote. When you challenged this figure you were told it could take a couple of months to check, which is clearly unacceptable.
Your financial adviser has since told me: 'I was losing patience and the will to live with their constant errors, mistakes and total incompetence', which sums up the frustration you and your adviser had experienced over many months. Read More Why will my state pension be more than my wife's? STEVE WEBB replies When I contacted ReAssure on your behalf it confirmed that the £26,000 figure was incorrect.
In fact, when the money was reinstated following the failed transfer, it had to reconstruct all of your records in order to put you back where you would have been had the transfer never taken place. In the process of doing this it spotted some ‘inconsistencies’ which meant that your policy was actually worth far more than it had originally thought.
You contacted me to say that you had received a phone call to say that Reassure was now valuing your pension at £87,000. You commented: ‘To say I am astounded is a pure understatement. Had I not approached you I do not think I would have seen this increased figure without your valuable intervention, so I would like to say a very BIG THANK YOU for helping to achieve this successful outcome.
' The final sum you have now received is £89,000 - more than £30,000 higher than the transferred figure, and more than £60,000 above the last figure you were quoted. I asked ReAssure for a comment and it said: 'After reviewing case, we accept service levels have fallen short of expectations and apologise for the time it’s taken to provide a correct policy valuation following the Ombudsman’s decision.
'We have taken action to put matters right in order to ensure the policy and value is in the correct position which includes undertaking a premium and unit holding reconstruction. 'Regrettably, this work has taken longer than expected because of the need to include those premiums that were collected up to and after the migration of the policy from the original pension provider.
'We have worked closely with the Financial Ombudsman Service to ensure your reader experiences no financial loss as a result of the delays, including offering a further sum to compensate for distress and inconvenience caused for the time taken to resolve matters. ' I was pleased to be able to help and delighted that the final transferred figure ended up at over £89,000 – well above the amount originally transferred.
But I agree that it is very worrying that if you had not challenged all of this, you would have ended up with a pension pot many tens of thousands of pounds less than its true value. Your experiences are a reminder to anyone getting pension valuations or transfer quotes to study them carefully and to ask searching questions if the figures are not as expected.
Ask Steve Webb a pension question Former Pensions Minister Steve Webb is This Is Money's Agony Uncle. He is ready to answer your questions, whether you are still saving, in the process of stopping work, or juggling your finances in retirement. Steve left the Department of Work and Pensions after the May 2015 election. He is now a partner at actuary and consulting firm Lane Clark & Peacock.
If you would like to ask Steve a question about pensions, please email him at pensionquestions@thisismoney.co.uk. Steve will do his best to reply to your message in a forthcoming column, but he won't be able to answer everyone or correspond privately with readers. Nothing in his replies constitutes regulated financial advice. Published questions are sometimes edited for brevity or other reasons.
Please include a daytime contact number with your message - this will be kept confidential and not used for marketing purposes. If Steve is unable to answer your question, you can also contact MoneyHelper, a Government-backed organisation which gives free assistance on pensions to the public. It can be found here and its number is 0800 011 3797. Steve receives many questions about state pension forecasts and COPE ¿ the Contracted Out Pension Equivalent.
If you are writing to Steve on this topic, he responds to a typical reader question here. It includes links to Steve's several earlier columns about state pension forecasts and contracting out, which might be helpful. SIPPS: INVEST TO BUILD YOUR PENSIONAJ BellAJ Bell0.25% account fee.
Full range of investmentsLearn MoreLearn MoreHargreaves LansdownHargreaves LansdownFree fund dealing, 40% off account feesLearn MoreLearn MoreInteractive InvestorInteractive InvestorFrom £5.99 per month, £100 of free tradesLearn MoreLearn MoreInvestEngineInvestEngineFee-free ETF investing, £100 welcome bonusLearn MoreLearn MoreProsperProsperNo account fee and 30 ETF fees refundedLearn MoreLearn MoreAffiliate links: If you take out a product This is Money may earn a commission. These deals are chosen by our editorial team, as we think they are worth highlighting. This does not affect our editorial independence. Compare the best Sipp for you: Our full reviews
Steve Webb Pension Reassure Annuity Manual Calculation Financial Ombudsman Lost Confidence Unit Linked Personal Pension Value Personal Pension
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Webb and Hubble sink deep into the dazzling Whirlpool Galaxy — Space photo of the weekA striking new image of the Whirlpool Galaxy is helping astronomers solve one of the biggest mysteries in star formation.
Read more »
Letters: Containing pension costs key to making city functionalIt’s time for a revised version of 2012’s Proposition B.
Read more »
The Perils of Taking a Tax-Free Pension Lump Sum Too SoonThe article discusses the potential pitfalls of withdrawing a tax-free pension lump sum before the usual retirement age, highlighting the significant implications for the future. It also explores alternative options for flexible drawdown, which can help manage income tax and ensure a longer-lasting pension pot.
Read more »
James Webb Spots Strange Structure at Core of Distant GalaxyThe James Webb Space Telescope captured a stunning image of the Squid Galaxy, revealing its dazzlingly luminous center.
Read more »