My £6,000 retirement fund is stuck in limbo with Sun Life

I retired earlier this year and in trying to give my pension income a boost, I decided to cash in my two life insurance policies, which have a total surrender value of about £6,000. I took out these policies with Imperial Life about 50 years ago, although the company was later bought by Sun Life of Canada.
I wrote to Sun Life and it said that the bank HSBC had a financial interest in my policies and so to release the funds it needed a letter of no interest from HSBC and that it would write to ask for one.
After waiting for two months, I called Sun Life and it said it hadn’t heard from HSBC but that it would write to the bank again. I thought this was fruitless and asked what would happen if HSBC never responded, but it said it couldn’t release my money until this letter arrived and there was nothing it could do until then.
Now it says the onus is on me to get the letter from HSBC, but it won’t because I don’t have an account with the bank. This also means that I can’t complain to HSBC. It has now been seven months since I first asked for my money but I am stuck and not able to get it.
Meanwhile, Sun Life continues to take premiums of £1.96 and £2.99 a month, which isn’t much but it makes it all the more frustrating when I just want to surrender the policies. Could you help?Nick, Croydon
• Best Sipp providers
How frustrating that you were left in limbo because these two companies were unable to communicate with each other. These were whole-of-life insurance policies that gave you the option of cashing them in early with a surrender value that tends to be lower than the payout that would be made when you died. I thought it was odd that HSBC had an interest (or charge) on these policies when you weren’t a customer of the bank. It turned out that you had been a customer of Midland Bank, which was bought by HSBC in 1992, and that the policies had been used as a kind of collateral because your Midland account came with an overdraft. Assigning the policies to the bank meant that if you died with money owed on an overdraft, the life insurance payout would be used to clear your debt.
• Andy Briggs: ‘Only one in seven people are saving enough for a decent retirement’
Alan Lakey from Highclere Financial Services told me that up until the late 1990s this was a common requirement from lenders because it provided a guarantee that loans or debts would be repaid quickly, rather than having to wait for the probate process after a customer died.You had cleared the overdraft and closed your Midland account a long time ago so the bank no longer had a right to any of the money — yet Sun Life still wanted a letter of no interest to prove that.I spoke to Sun Life of Canada’s parent company, Phoenix (it also confusingly owns SunLife), which said: “We are very sorry that Nick is unhappy with the service he has received. We required confirmation from the lender that both policies are no longer assigned and that the bank holds no further interest in the proceeds. We advised him to contact HSBC to enable us to proceed with the surrender of his policies and we also agreed to write to HSBC.”
• Phoenix abandons SunLife sale amid industry scrutiny
HSBC told me that it had no record of Sun Life asking for the document, but one day after I got involved, it had emailed the paperwork. You had the money two weeks later, plus a goodwill payment of £300 from Sun Life. You said: “I have no doubt that without your help I would still be waiting for my money.”
I am a junior doctor and was working at University Hospital Coventry between December and August. During that time I was paying £57 a month for a parking permit, which was deducted from my salary. But I was repeatedly fined by a company called CPP Parking, which manages the staff car park.
For some reason my permit was revoked without warning in March. As soon as I found out, I reapplied for one. But the website kept saying that it was pending approval, even though I was still paying for it each month.
I’ve emailed the hospital’s parking team, but no one replies and they don’t have a phone number. I have sent three letters to CPP, enclosing all the relevant evidence and a letter from my manager, but I haven’t had a response.
Some of the fines have been cancelled, but I am left with two totalling £200 that have not. This might not seem like a lot of money, but on my wage it’s a struggle.
I am hoping CPP will cancel my fines, but reminder letters keep coming through my door. It’s a lot of stress dealing with this, especially for a busy doctor.Name and address supplied
• Is it worth appealing a parking fine?
When I spoke to the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust it told me that you were given a six-month permit that started in September, two months before you began working on rotation at the hospital. The permit then expired in March, although you weren’t aware of this and thought it had been cancelled.
I thought it was illogical that your permit didn’t cover the dates in your contract. The trust said that it was normal for junior doctors to have a permit for six months, but it agreed that your experience highlighted a “disconnect between systems”. It said it was now trying to work out whether it was possible to give junior doctors a permit that covers their actual contract length.
The trust also claimed that you had logged into the wrong application which is why the permit was never renewed, although you disputed this and pointed out that you had struggled to get answers on what was causing the issue. Your payslips also showed that you were still paying for the permit even after it expired, so it didn’t seem right that you were being fined.
• The Times view on NHS reform: Back to Health
The trust said: “We understand how busy junior doctors are and value the work they do in caring for our patients. We have considered this case and, as a gesture of goodwill, we have cancelled the outstanding parking charges.
Parkingeye, the parent company of CPP, said: “These parking charges were issued because the doctor didn’t have a valid staff parking permit. However, we have now cancelled the charges at the request of the trust.”
But you then had a letter in September reminding you about a penalty from August. I spoke to Parkingeye again and it reassured you that this had been waived.
£1,463,000: the amount Troubleshooter has saved readers so far this year
If you have a money problem that you would like Katherine Denham to investigate email [email protected]. Please include a phone number