Utmost Life and Pensions Reviews 353

24 Mar 2026
I help my client Mr KC Wong ask for the surrender value. My first email sent to Utmost is 24 Mar. I also call Utmost Customer services on 27 Mar morning but helpless. Customer services stated that they cannot do anything over the phone and I would have to await a response from the email in 10-16 working days, even longer. It's unbelievable how difficult it is to review the surrender value and get a form. We send the same request to another insurance company local in the UK, they always responses us within 48 hours.

-Updated on 1 Apr 2026-
I got forms and information. Emma is very helpful.

-Updated on 10 Apr 2026-
All forms completed and sent to Utmost via email.

-Updated on 16 Apr 2026-
Confirm payment

Overall we are happy with the service.

I deal with Utmost (earlier Generali) for their Utmost Worldwide plan. I have signed necessary documents so cannot state from legal perspective that I was not aware but the agents selling this make sure you do not understand the fees being collected by them. It is extremely high. After servicing 10 years of payment, I received bonus USD 6K which was more than appropriated under administration charges. Infact, the charges was more than USD 6K. If you are stuck with them, like I am, I am continuing since the surrender charge is high but if you can avoid, please do.

I am very happy either way the performance of my investment with Utmost.

Online access needs a bit of work esp for former Reliance pensions but otherwise my experience with Utmost was very good. They took on my Equitable pension and managed a reasonable return and also my former Reliance SERPS. I was always pleasantly surprised at how the latter performed. When it came to transferring the funds to an annuity provider this happened startingly quick. In fact I asked for the transfer to occur ASAP, expecting delays of weeks. It all happened in a matter of days! Good on the phone too.

Slowest Conpany to claim pension monies from. Aviva sent me forms and monies same day I responded with signing of forms. Its is now weeks since Utmost sorted this (and Im still waiting). Found the people there I spoke to unhelpful and stroppy also

Utmost pan Europe. 2015 and 2016. Account still active. Accepted false instruments from a Guernsey trustee without question and issued a policy in their favour with two people as lives assured without their consent. Accepted large sums of money with inaccurate and missing SOF/SOW despite asking the Guernsey Trustee for it. Accepting documentation with forged signatures. Trying to extract 230,000 Euros from an account without the clients knowledge or permission. Despite being sent hard evidence, including forensic reports, still have the account and still charging fees and still allowing churning of assets. The account is still in a persons name that has been deceased since December 2016. It was my father in law. Utmost continues to refuse to correspond. You issued a policy to a Guernsey trustee following the receipt of false instruments and accepted large sums of money in different currencies with missing bank documentation despite your organisation asking fot it. You are responsible for documentation received from 3rd parties. The buck stops with Utmost so please don't palm us off to another jurisdiction.
The account is still showing the name of the life assured who has been dead since December 2016. should this account now show the relevant life assured who is still alive? You have been told he is deceased.

To be clear, the policy is my father in laws not mine. He has been deceased since 2016.

Thank you Laura, Everything has been dealt with so i have increased the experience rating. Excellent .Paul

Utmost want you to print off forms & post in when others happy for security questions & can do in email. Suffering from ill health at moment do cannot do this. Just want to see online and find out process to take some pension at 55.

We have spent over a year trying to assign the last part of our policy to our youngest son but we got only delays, pointless questions and nonsense letters about payments closed long ago. With gold rule, no problem.

I foolishly trusted them with my savings. They forced me to put money into account, and now I can't get a single penny back. My account has been deactivated, so I can't try to process a withdrawal. They control the withdrawal completely. I am delighted I enrolled on Way‍mine I found them transparent and what they said from day one about withdrawal is what I have seen.

Admin really slow! How can you make sensible investment/pensions decisions when they're taking over 10 days to respond AND their online offering is pathetic?
Time to move funds elsewhere, I think.

Steer far from this platform, they are very manipulative and dubious, it's obvious they are designed to lure and steal from their users. I am a victim and I won't want others to fall into the same scam. Being with PAIVA has been the best decision I took. They are trustworthy and my returns has been steady.

I Phoned them gave instructions to switches my pension investments.

WHICH THEY DID NOT.

SO LOST ME MONEY ££

** THROUGH THEIR INCOMPETENCE MISMANAGEMENT **

Very slow to respond to initial enquiry regarding a cash withdrawal request from MY pension pot. Customer services stated that they cannot do anything over the phone and I would have to await a response from the message I sent on their website (10 days ago at present!). It seems I am in for a lengthy, drawn out process to access MY money…..

Thank you Laura
I have emailed you with the details as requested and await your response

Hello Laura
Yes, it was sent on 04.09.25 at 16.34pm. I have just re sent it again?

Hello
Yes I have checked the email address is correct? The message is also in your online portal.

Hello Laura
Thank you for sending the relevant documents. I have returned the completed forms which I believe are required, but please do let me know ASAP if you need anything further as I do not want any further delays with this.
Thank you for your assistance,

Dated Aug 19, 2025 : slow to respond or even to acknowledge my emails. It’s almost like they are all working from home and get to choose who they will respond to and when. It’s hard not to feel that I am being ignored. Please keep in mind that it’s MY money. Extremely frustrating and unprofessional. I want to take all my ‘Equitable’ money out of my relatively small pension pot before I die, but it feels like they are callously & deliberately trying to prevent me from doing this. No excuses Utmost, get your act together.

Update:
Thankfully ‘Laura’ responded and I received the cash-in forms via email and filled those in, then subsequently wrote to them at the end of September requesting cash-in date of November 4th ( I had brought this forward from December to pre-empt any negative changes that might be introduced in the budget) Well it’s now the end of October and I haven’t seen anything back from them confirming that this is going to happen.

I have a pension fund administered by Utmost. Firstly, I've had numerous problems over the past few months logging into "myutmost". Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This is very frustrating (took me three attempts today before it let me in - I use a password manager so I wasn't making an error in my password).
I am now bringing together funds from various providers including Utmost. These will purchase an annuity. They are the only provider in my list not to use an industrywide communication system (Origo I think) which allows your chosen annuity provider to communicated easily with all the fund holders. Hence separate printed documents are required and old fashioned and haphazard post is needed.
Then when all their forms are completed, they write to me by snail mail to ask for the completion of a further form (when they could have notified me through myutmost that the form is there or could have arranged for me to fill in the form through their own secure system.
But no, they send it by the post; suggest I email a scanned copy back to them but fail to give the email address in the letter!!!
Update to this review: I called Utmost and they gave me the appropriate email address; I submitted the form and received an automated reply saying it will be dealt with within 10 days! When you are realising a fund to buy an annuity, waiting 10 days (when markets could move against you) because Utmost must have insufficient staff to deal with enquiries in a timely manner is very poor indeed.

Utmost have held my pension fund for 5 years,and in that time it's been a constant battle to receive regular monthly payments. So I decided to vote with my feet and transfer the funds to another company. I was told the process was fairly straightforward, however Utmost are reluctant to release my money and keep requesting more and more information about my assests even though they have no relevance to my pension fund. It's clearly a delay and frustrate tactic. They where happy to accept my pension fund when I original moved it too them with very few questions, but now , no matter what information I provide they keep coming back for more. They are fighting tooth and nail to hang onto my funds. I've told my new pension provider that if they delay one more time to contact the Ombudsman on my behalf. I have no doubt in my mind based on the heaps of information I have sent he will decide in my favour. But I shouldn't need to do this,if they did their "Utmost " to do the right thing.

Is anybody else here old enough to remember the Monty Python sketch about the insurance company which sold special ‘No Claims Policies’? Well Utmost are the No-pay Out Investment Specialists. My wife has been attempting to realise some investment policies she was left since April. Nothing much happened at first - after we chased them they sent us some forms. Since then, the service has got worse. After we sent the forms in, they just gave up replying to emails. It is now July. We finally managed to phone them. The lady on the phone seemed to think the payout could have been delayed because the original purchasers were recently deceased. I suppose that could be the case: they passed on roughly a decade ago, but then, time obviously passes at a different rate for Utmost.

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE… We’ve had an email from Utmost saying the assets have been realised and payment would be made in a few days… Oh - hang on, that was a week and half ago. Still no payout. The incompetence of these people verges on criminal negligence…

Slow, slow, slow. Two week response time for anything. I telephoned and asked why so slow, answer was we are very busy...
So surely hire more staff!
I am transferring out!

Extremely helpful whilst also professional and personable.