Franklin Templeton Reviews 3

They are an absolute disgrace. I would go as far to say thieves.

My elderly stepfather never opened an account with them, they took over some other company. I was asked in November 2024 to simplify my stepfather's investment portfolio and he particularly wanted to close the FT account as they sent him tree-loads of paper monthly and kept on pestering him for utility bills as part of their 'anti-money laundering' project. Two bills were sent and yet they persisted in asking for more.

We were told that the account could only be closed and the investment returned to my stepfather by a letter instruction, which was sent to their Ireland office. We received a confirmation that the account had been closed in December 2024.

No money received. I chased again in April 2025 (I can only do this when visiting him and he lives far away). They said they would look into the matter urgently. They did not. No money.

I chased again in August 2025. They said to contact them via a portal, which I set up. Then they wanted to communicate by email, which was what we wanted all along rather than having to drive to the Post Office to send letters to Ireland. Still no money.

In December 2025 they sent an email asking to confirm bank details by letter, which we did. Then they send an email to say the bank details need to be confirmed by phone.

It's now February 2026. An Indian Call centre rang my stepfather without warning. He gave the bank details again, something I'm not entirely comfortable with. Heaven knows if they will actually have the decency to make the £4,500 payment into his account.

I won't score the company as 1 star but that is wholly based on the first 30 years of using this company. BUT for a company that states on its website that it "treats all customers fairly and putting client needs at the core of their business", it does not do a very good job at it! When my son was born, I opened up an account to save for his 21st, that was OVER 30 years ago, I opened a second account for my next son, almost 30 years ago, they were regular savings plans and I have put money into the funds every month up until FT decided that my money is NOT good enough for them and stopped the savings accounts and told me that I could only invest in their company if I did it through a financial advisor after they changed the rules on investing with them, I do not want to pay extra costs to put some money into an account and other funds do not have this same rule to block everyday savers like myself. FT basically threw away 30+ years of good faith and threw my loyalty back in my face, I was not happy then (September 2024 when the change was made) and am still not happy that a longstanding customer can get treated so badly, I will be emptying the remainder of my funds this year and any surplus will be invested with another investment company who actually want my custom.
There is no positive I can give the company after they did this, my daughter wanted to put several thousand into a fund of her own but we are looking elsewhere for that too.
After so many years as a loyal customer this is not how I expected to be treated... I have probably been saving for longer than some of the account managers having been alive.
I will never recommend Franklin Templeton to friends or colleagues, I would never think of investing other monies with them, they do not exist to me anymore (well at least once I withdraw the last of my shares).
Truly awful way to treat customers

Poorly run financial company and website.

I have a college savings plan (529) through FT. The company was always difficult to deal with because of limited hours (no weekend support). They recently have "transitioned" to a new accounting company and have seemingly have lost my account. There are multiple pages that have different account LOGIN parameters and every one of them can't find my account, even though I get mail with an account number.
Their webpages and flow feels like they never moved on past 1995. Why are there so many different and completely separate pages to login?
They also moved their 529 plan gifting site to "UGift" that forces the sender to call me and get a CODE so they can actually send the gift. Since I can no longer find my online account I couldn't provide the code and my son lost out on a $1K gift.
This company went from cartoonish to dirt overnight.