Families waiting for payouts after Scottish Widow customer service 'meltdown'
Some bereaved families are still waiting for payouts following a customer service "meltdown" at life insurance and pensions firm Scottish Widow.
The issue has seen some customers wait months to get hold of pension, investment, and life insurance money following the death of a loved one.
In some cases where the issue has now been resolved, it took almost a year for the cash to be paid out.
This is despite the promise from Scottish Widows to have the "backlog" of complaints sorted by the end of March.
In January, Scottish Widows' chief operating officer Donald MacKechnie revealed that 6,000 complaints were still waiting to be resolved.
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As of March 31, Scottish Widows told This is Money that around 90% of these cases had now been resolved however, some were still being handled.
This would equate to 10% or "several hundred" if the 90% figure was taken into account.
The company told the publication that the remainder of the complaints were "generally more complex" cases and will be resolved in the weeks ahead.
A Scottish Widows spokesperson told Mirror Money: “We’re very sorry that some of our customers have not received the level of service they should have over recent months.
"We've listened to their concerns, taken action and our service levels are now getting back to normal.”
Scottish Widows said it had hired another 500 staff for its UK call centres in the last year to tackle the backlog and speed up processing times.
The insurance company said all future complaints should now be resolved within one month.
Within the first month, Scottish Widows said the backlog of complaints had fallen to 4,700 from 6,000.
In February, This is Money revealed the "customer service meltdown" which Scottish Widows customers had faced over the last 12 months.
In most cases, an elderly parent had died and the families were due money from either a pension or investment.
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These types of payments should usually be paid out within seven working days however, some had to wait months for the cash to come in.
The investigation revealed that some customers faced hour-long call wait times trying to get through to the right person at the company and some noted that staff were "dismissive" when they finally got through.
Some noted that certain information had been lost by the insurance company.
Scottish Widow's boss Donald MacKechnie blamed the delays on IT problems, postal mistakes and missing files.
He told This is Money that the company was training staff to respond "efficiently and compassionately" to requests and in January, its wait times had dropped to under 10 minutes.
In January he said: "We have not got it right. We should have done things differently and we’re very sorry."
The Mirror has contacted Scottish Widows for comment.
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