Service Update: 2 Staff Operations and Longer Provider Delays
Published / Last Updated on 16/07/2021
Over the last week, two of our longest standing and most experience team member have been in hospital for surgery. Both have come through their operations and are now in recovery awaiting test results.
We have reorganised the remaining team and prioritised client work over our online tech. and development work to ensure continuity for you, our clients. We do not expect our staff to return to work for another two months but we will do what is needed to expedite client advisory works.
Many government organisations, pensions and investment providers are still chaos. The 3 to 6 months delays we experienced after the initial lockdown periods in Spring last year still prevail. In addition, now that many have been vaccinated and covid safety rules are being relaxed, you cannot miss the fact that the number of infections and therefore, by default, the number of people required to then isolate is climbing ever higher.
Imagine the numbers. If 500,000 people in the UK currently have covid-19 then even if just that triggers another 5 people isolating for each case, that is an additional 2.5m million people. Most businesses continue to struggle with staff shortages across all industries and the financial services industry is not immune.
We are still experiencing delays in data gathering financial information about your pensions or investments and we do not expect this to change through the summer. In fact, the next 6 weeks will be the hardest for us given that we are also moving into holiday season, so even more firms will be short of staff.
Just 6-8 weeks to ride out this covid wave on top of holiday season on top of our staff in recovery. We highlighted in this video that even just yesterday, a pension company unable to supply us with a copy of an application form for 15 working days. That’s 3 weeks before we get a copy meaning our advisory works are already likely to be 4 weeks late for that client. It’s atrocious.
We do not expect our clients to see much change in our overall service as we are working 7 days a week but if it takes an extra 2,3 weeks or a month please do bear with us. Know that we are fighting provider delays to get your work done.
Do not worry about us though, we will not ‘burn out’, we will take a week off in September.
We thank you all for your patience and ask that you also stay safe out there, we are forecasting another 2 million infections over the next 6 weeks or so, so take extra care.
