Phoenix Life Reviews 3,200

WoW.
What an unprofessional company.

I have tried 5x to take my pension lump sum out.

Each time a hurdle. Each time a reason why I can't.
1) people in background being so loud I couldn't hear the person I was speaking to.
2) Girl just repeat I can't hear you, speak better louder. I'm an asthmatic and my voice is affected.
3) talk to pack to be sent out - no pack
4) re talk to - pack sent
5) then because they had not changed on system the change of name married 30years ago
6) send copies document, then told need originals - sent original by safe record post they sent back in snail post!! Where documents could of been taken.
7) then couldn't do due to a new pack sent out due to time lapse (from previous time tried to and money never got to the account)
8) then the name changed had not happened and loaded X3 calls
9) then could do as a new pal had to be sent in change of name
9) then can't do it over phone as system wrong and want to send out in post form taking another week as bank holiday !!
10) complaints sorted at 11am Wednesday but then never received the forms sitting there for 2.5hrs for an email to come through. (Well all day til 5.30pm when closed)
11) Had to ring back and ask why email not sent told it takes 24 hours - but I have to complete the forms by return with 24 hours 11am Thursday !!! So more lies.
12) Ask for someone to call me from complaints and no one did in an hour. Then another form sent. Email sent to say they have complaints but no one called.
13) Phoned back got a women who said be aise I had answered the security questions in advance I had to phone back. Firstly said that I could not speak to complaints, I wanted complaints who I had dealt with earlier, not go through another person who fobs me off. I now beyond fed up of this nonsense. So hang up re ring. Get a guy who was even more unhelpful told him to get customer complaints to ring that I spoke to this am.
14) waited another hour and no one phoned. Now on the phone again asked to speak to complaints and now 24 minutes of waiting. Do I need a solicitor? Do I need to involved media?
I started at 8.30am and it's now 4.30pm and no further forward in getting paid my monies.
15) it's now Tuesday 5pm another lie? 1 hour and 3 minutes and waiting. From a complaints manager. The document yet to come that I'm to sign and send back by email - I can't send back to an email... It has to be posted.... So another week by the time they get as a back holiday and processing.... Then could take 10 to 15 days to go through so another 3 weeks to get my money they promised to do in 24/48 hours 4 weeks ago. I've told the person she better check that info re my case otherwise I'm already furious in being lied to again.

So 4 months on still no luck Now I risk loosing a house because I can't get this money from phoenix life.

I've left a complaint. Told them to contact me when some one can actually do something in sorting the money. No one called..

The time wasted so far is equal to £1,000 in hours of pay wasted.

Update: the forms were not sent and I sat for 2.5 hrs waiting for an email. I had to ring again
To be put on hold mostly for the 20 minute call.
For them to say they can't see the forms otherwise they could be sent. He could not send as could not see them but he can say they have been sent.
So 2 emails neither received. I'm so cross now it's beyond a joke!! I told them someone in complaints better sort out and ring me.

Update: some one called and they going to try to speed process so we don't loose the house as waiting months for monies to be paid out.
Let us see if they can sort out as soon as possible or another few weeks as they said 10 to 15 days taking and that would be loosing the house for my disabled family member!

Update as of 5.30pm Wednesday - they failed after spending from 8.30am 22 phone calls, no email as promised so could sign and return and hanging on hold for hours and I ended up getting really stressed and had asthma attack that evening.

Now Thursday I have to start again.... Trying to get my money for the house. 23rd phone call. Nope no one came back to me. So had to call again. The form was on the system, so why could no one send me yesterday to sign? Another lie. Now said email can take up to 24hrs to send which breaks the deadline to get money for Tuesday. 40 minutes in the email still has not been sent.

Now on 25th call and still no emails yo sign the forms. Now I have said will travel the 100 miles there and back to sign the forms.

I do not now believe ANYTHING this company says. I'm beyond upset, Asthma trigger as I'm so stressed. I just don't believe I'm going to get my money back.

Omg, I honestly thought they were just being incompetent with me, and then I read the other reviews. Clearly I’m not alone.

My mum died on 22 March. I applied for her life insurance to cover the funeral costs. I provided every form they asked for, including the interim coroner’s certificate. This is money my mum paid into for over 20 years so that we wouldn’t have the stress or worry when the time finally came.

Phoenix Life are refusing to pay out until a cause of death is known. She died of cancer, we’re just waiting on histology, but apparently that’s not enough. They claim they’ve written to the coroner twice, except they wrote to the wrong coroner. Lancashire instead of Gwent. The incompetence is unbelievable.

They say they’ll escalate it, but I’m not holding out much hope. I’ve now received the funeral invoice and have 21 days to pay.

Stop being so bureaucratic, Phoenix Life, and release the money. You’re making an already distressing time even more unbearable. Shame on you!

Huge amounts of unnecessary paperwork if a policy holder dies.
All I needed was to transfer the funds to my mum.
They sent me 30 pages, most of which was irrelevant.
Not fun to do business with.

Would give a lesser rating if I could… family have been trying to get payment for a policy following mums death, trust me it’s not about of money they think throwing £50 quid compensation helps but they still have not paid out the money from the policy, shocking company to deal with

Like many other Phoenix Life customers, if I could rate this comany less than 1 star, I would.

I am currently an ex-pat living overseas in Australia. I have a very small sum of money with Phoenix Life. When I approached them to ask for a statement of my account, it took nearly 1 year to get a sincere reply. I had to complete an unnecessary indentification process to prove who I was, and was required to send my reply back, not by email, but by registered post.

Which I did. Three times! Because they kept losing my paperwork, even though it was sent by registered post with signature required, to Milind Dhuru, Operations Director.

Eventually I got an apology letter and admission of poor professionalism, from their Complaint Officer, but only after I threatened to take my issue to the Financial Ombudsman Service. They then offered me £300 in compensation for their mistakes (which I have not yet accepted) because I still have unresolved issues.

What I find truly reprehensible is that this company is still allowed to operate at such an appalling standard of professionalism within the governance of the financial industry in the UK. My paltry pension has not only lost 25% of its value in 25 years, it is only growing by 0.03 of one percent per annum.

Today I have about £4,645 in may Phoenix Life account, whereas the same pension in Australia has earned me nearly $40,000. It does not take very little to realise the sheer financial incompentence of Phoenix Life.

What I will say is this: Phoenix Life participates in a constant campaign of delay and denial. All their processes are designed to be arduous, which I believe is a part of their business model and on purpose. There is no process that is easy. It is like they want to wear people down by attrition. On purpose.

My parting comment is this: if you move your pension to another pension provider, do it. You will be better off, financially and mentally!

Fraudulent. If you have time to read this I strongly advise you do.
This is true.
Fobbed us off until we realised their game then they have now gone silent. Actually minus infinity stars but a star has to be selected to proceed on Trust Pilot. Phoenix Life changed my mother's name on the policy and added her financial advisor as a co-owner so the policy couldn't be surrendered. This is fraud and I am taking this to the police fraud department, FSA, my MP, Martin Lewis and all media news reporting and social media outlets. My mother has been trying to surrender her policy for 18 months. Every step of the way has been an obstacle and every reason and excuse not to give her her own money, which if she'd invested in something better would have made her £100,000s of pounds. Whilst she's had a small premium payout every month Phoenix Life will have made £100,000s on her money being invested for over 25 years.Now they say that her money surrender value is worth less than invested. My mother had to take out a loan because she hasn't been able to get her money out of Phoenix Life. She had broken a rib falling downstairs, she'd broken her wrist, and she needed to move to a place all on one floor. She is on the breadline due to loan repayments. Phoenix Life know this and have done nothing to facilitate getting her money out but only obstructed as much as possible and now gone silent. They haven't corrected her name properly. They say they've taken the financial advisor off the policy, both took months to get to that and her name still isn't right. They then said the policy needs registering as a trust when it doesn't meet the criteria for registration. They said this needed doing before surrender but I had been told previously that she doesn't need to refer to the trust as she herself is surrendering the policy it is not being surrendered after death, as in death the trustee would be used for the beneficiaries. My mother's taken the trustee off the policy anyway now and there's nothing left to be done in order to receive the surrender value which incidentally we need a phone call to check the amount on day of surrender. Our last email 9th April 2026 which included being addressed to CEO received no acknowledgement and no reply and it's now 24th April 2026. After I found my mother's name was altered and the financial advisor was a co-owner on the policy I queried this with Phoenix Life saying I thought this looked fraudulent and shouldn't it have been seen that the financial advisor's name was on the policy, it was then they suggested they look into it as a complaint, I was told on findings in the back office that they themselves made the alterations to my mother's name and added the financial advisor to it. This could only have been done manually or computer programmed to do it. The complaint was stopped after they phoned my mother when they know not to phone her but to phone me as my mother can't hear. It's recorded on the policy to phone me. I had to restart the complaint when I found out some months later. The initial complaint I made they said they would send in writing and they haven't done even after numerous requests. Now they say that complaint is still ongoing. Yet the woman handling the complaint, I spoke to said after she'd been in the back office, that she had seen the original documentation and the complaint had been completed and the corrections made. There is now a complaint about the complaint and another complaint about me being told I don't have telephone access that after a year it runs out. It was well within the year that my mother had given consent because whilst I have telephone consent and actually am POA every time I phoned I had to hand the phone over to my mother and shout what they wanted to know to confirm authorisation. They blocked me every time and I had to go through this ritual with my mother but then if my mother wasn't there they blocked me. They said it wasn't on the system that I had telephone authorisation access but I made sure and confirmed every time my mother and I went through the ritual that telephone authorisation was actually documented clearly on their system. I am still photocopying evidence again and have Special Delivery costs. I live an hour away from my mother and other family members live out of the country. Quite frankly it's made my mother and I both ill. It's been very difficult for us both. It's not a situation she could have managed on her own as I've found it very difficult. It's very dark what they are doing, and if my mother, God forbid had have been deceased the situation as beneficiaries that would have been presented to us would have been perfect for Phoenix Life because it would have been impossible for us as I've seen on reading people's comments on Trust Pilot cases have been going on for years. No reply to Data Subject Access Request.

I must start by saying what friendly staff Phoenix Life have employed and that they answer the phone in really good time for today’s world. The main issue seems to be with their processes. We recently decided to cash in an old pension we had for a while with a small value. We had already done this with my wife’s Liverpool Victoria LV pension of a similar amount and they transferred the money over within a matter of hours and it was all sorted in one day. I started by ringing Phoenix life and they said they would need to send out some documents in the post. About 10 days later the snail mail arrived. We read the documents and sent the claims form from their website to them recorded delivery. I rang 4 days later to be informed I had to be transferred to an advisor. The perfectly lovely lady then read out 20 minutes worth of terms and conditions (not exaggerating) even though I made it clear we didn’t want advice and this was an execution only transaction. She then advised me that she would send a claims form in the post for me to complete and return by post. I advised her that I had already done this by recorded delivery and it should be on file. The lady found the form and she told me it was waiting to be scanned onto the system. I was then told that the transaction would take a further 15 working days or three weeks to process even though they had the documents a week before. In total the process for claiming your funds seems to be approx 1 calendar month with the wind behind you. All a bit outdated. Placing the length of time you aim to provide a service in, within a policy or procedure for staff to read out doesn’t make it ok. 1 month in today’s day and age is really poor and isn’t justified but at least the people were friendly.

PHOENIX LIFE ARE THE WORST COMPANY IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!!! THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO SET UP A DIRECT DEBIT! THEY TOOK OVER SCOTTISH MUTUAL AND EVER SINCE IT HAS GONE DOWNHILL WITH THIS COMPANY. BRING BACK SCOTTISH MUTUAL AT LEAST THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING. PHOENIX LIFE ARE INCOMPETENT IN EVERY WAY. THIS COMPANY SHOULD BE CLOSED DOWN. GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH.

Trying to cash in my pension with this company is a nightmare. They just drag everything out and its obvious that they are trying to get me to buy a annuity. Which I do not want

Would rate zero stars but not an option. Look after my father in laws policy changed address 2 years ago. Docs do have our new address on however the cover letter than goes to the old address. Spent 20 min on the phone trying to explain they have already got the new address its on everything else!! Dear god dont let these people have your finances!

Phoned today to chase up my lump sum pension. Apparently sent thru CHAPS rather than BACS or FSP. Was left holding on the phone for over 30 minutes, no call back offered (not that I trust they would). Noone from this company explained the payment had bounced back??! Surely they would see this on their records? The person I spoke to was disinterested and sounded young and inexperienced, very off-putting. Once this is sorted I'll gladly wash my hands of this shoddy, poorly run company.

I have an AVC with Phoenix and a date on every documentation they have ever sent me that my retirement date is in January. Since then I have been caught between Phoenix and my pension provider who are blaming each other for the fact that I have not yet received any payment, and with no real date as to when this will be resolved. My difficult contact with Phoenix has been compounded by their claim they can only deal with the trustees of my AVC, including not even being able to tell me how much is in MY account. Myself and millions of other people are reliant on pension providers to to their job, it should not have to be this hard!

Received a letter about lump sum allowances, which stated I had used the full allowance. Funny! I don't remember that!!! Asked them to clarify, gave them every conceivable piece of info and they emailed back asking for 4 things I already told them. Curiously, the FIRST responder was the Operations Director at Customer Services. Why is he dealing with this simple low level question? Feels suspicious, like they lost my money or mishandled it and are just giving me the runaround.

What part of you can’t speak with my mum on the phone do you not understand. SHE IS DEAF !!
She’s send you a letter recorded delivery telling you my father would have to deal with you . And you haven’t even replied . .
Shocking and boarding on discrimination!!

Absolutely awful service I lost my mum in February and it took them 6 weeks to even apply the death certificate to the policy and still waiting despite everything they need being sent weeks ago now would avoid
Now mid April and still chasing every time I get told it will be escalated presume it’s to a tortoise also logged a complaint that takes 8 weeks awful service at a difficult time

Absolutely appalling service from Phoenix Life.

I submitted my pension claim at the beginning of February. Eight weeks later, after multiple phone calls from France, I still have not been paid.

I provided all required details from the start, including my SWIFT code and IBAN. Despite this, I was repeatedly told information was missing. Each time I called, I was given a different excuse — first that payment would be made within two weeks, then that bank details were missing, and more recently I was even asked what currency I wanted to be paid in.

Three days after confirming euros, I chased again — only to be told the payment had not even been processed.

This has been an incredibly stressful and upsetting experience. I have financial commitments waiting on this money, and the constant delays, errors, and lack of coordination have caused sleepless nights and significant anxiety.

I am also disabled, and I feel this has not been taken into consideration at any point during this process.

The staff are polite, but the system is clearly broken. You have to fight for every bit of progress.

I would strongly warn others to be prepared for delays, repeated errors, and a very frustrating experience when dealing with Phoenix Life.

Awful , non existent customer service .
I have called them about 10-12 since Xmas to cash in my pension.
Each time I get a different answer for the delay in paying me , despite confirming they have received all the paperwork and done the relevant checks .
You would think it was their money they were dealing with .
I have already raised a complaint which will no doubt have to go the the ombudsman.
I suggest proper staff training and checking their processes is the only thing that will improve this company’s reputation.

Slow & cumbersome communication processes, no web access available for policies. Unable to email any literature. Any questions or queries required 40 minute phone calls & long wait times. All communication was by letter, making access to MY funds slow, laborious & frustrating.

Put one star as no option for less!! AVOID THIS COMPANY. GET YOUR MONEY OUT ASAP. BE AWARE TO ACCESS YOUR MONEY IT WILL TAKE FOREVER. WHAT A SHIT SHOW.
WE WILL DEAL WITH THEM THROUGH THE OMBUDSMAN.

My wife died in September 2024 with my life assurance policy assigned to her. I then discovered my direct debit had not been actioned from February 2025. I wrote to them asking why and trying to change the beneficiary After been fobbed off I requested the .policy to be cashed in. They are now been obstructive! I do not intend them to mess my family up any more and may pay a visit to their office with City of London Police to arrest management for Fraud and Theft