Figuring out your funds

BANKS ARE notorious for their poor service. But imagine ringing your branch and asking how much you had in your account, only to be told: "Certainly, sir, we'll get back to you in four months." That is precisely what is happening in the investment world.

Information is vital to making your money grow as proficiently as possible. Smart investors keep an eye on how their nest-eggs are progressing, and switch aggressively between chart-topping managers. Yet there is no legal requirement for investment houses to provide their customers with valuations or projections. Even when companies promise to supply figures, they can be very slow to produce them. .

Customers at Windsor Life, which recently took over Gan Life, are experiencing a nearly four-month moratorium on quotations, allegedly because of unifying computer systems. Abbey Life and Scottish Equitable are among other companies earning reputations for delayed responses.

Mike MacLeod, an independent financial adviser, says: "I have a client with a number of Windsor Life policies, who wants a full financial planning review. I know it's going to be a nightmare getting the figures out of them, but how can I advise without them?"

Another financial adviser has been trying to discover what his clients' Windsor Life policies are worth since last September. He says: "When I did get some figures back they were wrong. Companies can get figures out to you fast enough when they are trying to sell you a policy. They drag their feet where their existing clients are concerned."

And this can be particularly prevalent when their own performance has slipped, and they think that their policyholders may be in the process of contemplating a switch to another manager.

The introduction of stakeholder pensions has also made some companies reluctant to give projections, even to existing policyholders. Abbey Life has just started releasing information after suspending its service for nearly two months. A spokesman says: "We wanted to look again at the charging structures of our plans. This wasn't too complicated for ordinary personal pensions.

"But many of the older-style contracts posed more complex problems, which took us some time to unravel. We didn't want to release information which would turn out to be misleading."

Alan Pemberton, of financial advice firm AMR, agrees stakeholder pensions are causing difficulties. He says: "Stakeholder has totally confused the industry. There is a huge amount of nervousness , not least because the Government has now highlighted the huge profits the industry has been making out of its policyholders for so long."

But there are hopes that companies might be shamed into efficiency next year, when regulators begin to produce league tables of the top companies. The Treasury is eager for customers to get help separating the wheat from the chaff when selecting long-term investments.

Until then policyholders must rely on the small print of their contracts to call their companies to account. If a policy says you can have projections on demand within a certain time, and the insurer fails to meet its obligation, then you can in theory take legal action. But if you can understand the gobbledygook at the back of your policy, you can probably calculate the projection yourself.