Standard Life UK Reviews 

26 weeks after requesting funds still nothing call after call after call your service is dreadful.. complaint made and wont be investigated until payout... which will be when... some advice i received was if you are short of money i can tell you where your nearest food bank is REALLY are STANDARD LIFE SO DESPERATE FOR MONEY THEY ARE STOPPING CUSTOMERS FROM TAKING THEIR FUNDS.. i have writren to Angela Byrne and writre on Andy Briggs Linkden page and even they dont care
18.2.26 update srandard review from standard life which totally ingnores my review because if you did you would take note 1/ money not paid out 2/ COMPLAINT WILL NOT BE LOOKED INTO UNTIL PAYOUT IS MADE... YOU SERIOUSLY HAVE LITTLE OR NO THOUGHT ABOUT CUSTOMERS AND CLEARLY DO NOT CARE

Absolutely terrible experience. Tried setting up a SIPP as I wanted to add money into a SIPP to invest and build my own pension pot. Two accounts were made for me, requested to cancel one and keep the other open, weeks went by with still no communication. Must have called them about five times chasing why I have not had any form of communication still on this being set up to them apologising for the admin errors and reassuring me I would get a letter, email and access to my online portal. Weeks go by again, still nothing so i chase and ask surely you want my business. Only to be told that they had set up not 2 but 3 accounts in error and it was taking them this long to cancel and keep 1 much to my frustration the man I spoke with was incredibly rude and interrupted me expressing my frustration on this matter. I told him, this is not my error it is yours - it can't be this hard. I cancelled everything to do with them and will never use them. Avoid at all costs. I have now taken my business elsewhere and they set me up the same day. Not difficult!

I had a pension plan with a payment date of 13/11/25. The money didn't arrive. SL sent me 2 letters, which arrived on 22/11/25. No explanation by email, no phone call. SL said , when I at last got through, that I could not claim my pension because I needed to send details of my bank account and passport. But none of the letters or phone calls I've had with them mentioned that I had to do this. After many communications (phone calls-when they answer the phone-email, messages) I got a new pension date of 1st March 26. The money arrived in my bank on 4th February 2026. What a SHAMBLES.
I have informed the financial Ombudsman. Let's see what result I get.

Always been very efficient with my pension needs and especially transfers . No hassle .

I wanted to draw down my small pension to my bank account and went through the entire process online to do so. At the end it said that I had successfully completed the process and that the money would go to my bank account, however it hadn’t , the pension balance is still exactly the same. Very annoying and now I have to spend lots of time trying to sort it out.

After speaking to a member of staff at Standard Life on 3-Feb-2026 I started the transfer of a pension from Scottish Widows. It is 8 calendar days later (11-Feb-2026) and I can see the funds have landed and showing in my online account. Can't fault it! Thank you.

Transfer of pension into standard life pension - very easy to use on the app and notified when done.

Their customer service isn't perfect but credit where it's due ,they do get things sorted out eventually.

I tried to access my account last Thursday, to see various past documents, and all I was offered was the opportunity to alter my security details. I sent a message about this via FaceBook, and received the following reply:
"We do currently have an issue with Bulk Purchase Annuity plans not showing online, however, a fix is planned for this tonight and should resolve the issue.
Social Media Team"
The following day showed no improvement. Meanwhile I have had two messages, one on Thursday and one on Friday both giving me Standard Life verification codes. What am I supposed to do with them? The website also says "log in to send us a secure message". Having logged in there seems to be no option to do this. I am very frustrated by this, which I believe has happened before.

Filled out my application form last Sunday for a pension plan I received an email from Standard Life saying I would receive my welcome pack through the post including my log in details & password to log into the app, I’ve since received an email saying there is a important message to read in the app however I’ve not received anything in the post so I can’t log into the app to read the document. Not very impressive so far it’s been a week now, I’m not sure I can trust a company with my pension money if it takes this long to post my documents….

Standard life have been nothing but hardwork since my mum passed away. She had 2 plans with them and it’s been months of chasing to take my mums money back that she paid into this! Mum had another pension with Nest who processed and sent the money over within 7 days, we are now 4 months of chasing with Standard life. It’s hard having to keep dragging up the matter that mum has passed away everytime we chase them! Now they are just point blank not replying to us. We was told 14 days over a month ago for the funds to be realised and now they are just not replying! Awful service considering the circumstances! … To add, even after the reply to the email sent as stated below, still heard NOTHING since!

Arranged to transfer an old employer pension into my SL pension. Did it all online through my SL account. Transfer happened significantly quicker than the quoted SLA

I needed to query a few pension related issues. My call was answered quickly and all issues were understood and the information I needed was given.

I transferred over more than half my pot to consolidate with SL, largely because their website and fund information is so much better than another General pension provider. The transfer was both easy and fast with good comms (from both parties tbf) thanks to the inter-company system the big boys use.
Happy to put all my eggs on the SL funds and we'll see how they do with drawdown.

Transferred another pension to Standard Life. As straightforward as I could have hope for. I'm only giving 4 stars, as I'm yet to draw from them, so I can't say how that will be yet!

This a reply the my first post (see below)
I have a Pension with Standard Life. They Website is absolutely broken.
I am waiting for they technic people are trying to fix it which is still causing them a problem
So I remain unimpressed as I still can not access or manage my pension plan. I would not recommend them.
I have not been able to find any contact details to report this problem so I have had to use a complaints for which have not had a reply to yet.
My confidence in Standard Life is at rock bottom

Transferred in a small pension. It was simple to do and was completed in a timely manner. Thanks 😀

Easy straight forward pension transfer into Standard Life Pension

Excellent experience so easy to complete no complicated process when doing transfer would highly recomend
Transfer completed within 4 weeks . Outstanding service