Rothesay Life Plc · DRN-6220838

The complaint Mr B is unhappy as he is unable to access Rothesay Life Plc’s online services. What happened Our investigator set out the background to the complaint in his letter of recommendation, for ease of reference I’ve included an amended copy of this below: Mr B first tried to access the online portal on 6 May 2025 as he wanted to access his P60. However, after logging in, Mr B tried to use the link, and it didn’t work. Instead, it showed an error message. On 18 May 2025, Mr B raised this case with Rothesay which they raised as a complaint for investigation. I note in Mr B’s email to Rothesay that he states he can in fact login to the portal, sometimes at the second or third attempt, but if he selects Personal Documents, he got an ‘oops’ message and is logged out. Rothesay formally investigated the matter and issued their Final Response Letter on 27 May 2025. In this letter, Rothesay advised that they were able to see the login attempts, alongside authentication codes which were issued to complete the login security process. The details entered are confirmed by Rothesay as correct. Rothesay went on to explain to Mr B that they also hadn't received any contact from other policyholders regarding the same issue he was experiencing. Rothesay looked into the online servicing issue but at that time were unable to note any technical issues with their online portal facility. As a result, they were unable to uphold Mr B’s complaint. Rothesay suggested that should the issues continue, to provide screenshots which they would happily escalate to their Technical Team for further investigation. On 27 May, 24 June and 23 July 2025, Mr B provided additional information to Rothesay in the form of screenshots of the error messages he was getting. Rothesay escalated this to their IT Team for investigation per their emails of 3 June 2025, 1 July 2025 and 16 September 2025. Rothesay acknowledged Mr B’s frustration with respect of the online issue and assured him this had been escalated but apologised as they were unable to provide Mr B with a timeframe for resolution. As the issues haven’t been resolved, Mr B referred his complaint to us on 29 September 2025. Our investigator looked into matters but didn’t uphold the complaint, he said that he couldn’t say that the problems Mr B was having were as a result of something Rothesay had done wrong. He said that the online portal wasn’t something Rothesay had to offer but an

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additional service and there were other ways of getting the information Mr B needed. He did think Rothesay could have provided clearer information about their investigations and timescales but it had apologised for this. So he didn’t think it needed to do more. Mr B didn’t accept the investigator’s view. In summary he has explained to us that he was a computer scientist and he has tried everything to solve this issue without success. He explained that he is reliant on the information accessible on the portal, as his payments have varied without explanation and he is a pensioner with health issues who is completely reliant on his pension income. He says the experience has been extremely stressful. He explained that whilst Rothesay’s online portal may not be something it is obliged to provide, it promotes it as the best way to monitor your pension, and this places a responsibility on Rothesay to make sure it works for their customers. He hadn’t seen evidence that Rothesay could provide an alternative service by mail. As Mr B didn’t agree and the investigator wasn’t persuaded to change his view, the case was to be allocated to an ombudsman for a final decision. In the meantime, Mr B let us know of some developments. He had since contacted Rothesay following the investigators view to see if he could get the correct information via another route. He asked that it send all the information he required now by email and future p60s and payslips by email going forward – as he cannot use the online portal. The initial response he received did not have all the information he required. And he then didn’t hear anything for a while. Mr B then received a response that included his payslip and it seems he now had what he asked for and he said he looked forward to receiving this information monthly. He also set out that further attempts had been made to sort the online portal access but had failed to find a solution. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. And having done so I won’t be upholding this complaint, I appreciate Mr B will be unhappy with this but I’ll explain why. The complaint that Mr B brought to this service and that was answered by Rothesay was about the problems with his access to its online portal. This is a difficult issue for us to help with, the solution Mr B wants is for him to have online access to his pension but as I’m sure he knows, we cannot fix this. This isn’t a case where we can look to establish whether a loss has occurred due to a business’s error and then make an award if it has, as is the typical case we would deal with. And Mr B hasn’t alleged that the problems have caused him a loss, so this isn’t something I can consider. However, I appreciate that Mr B’s point is also that he has suffered a lot of stress trying to get this resolved and Rothesay hasn’t provided him with a good service. Whilst I completely understand his point about the online portal and Rothesay promoting this as the best way to access his pension, it is an additional service it provides, it isn’t obligated to provide it. So this makes it difficult for me to conclude that it should provide compensation for it not working. I also note that whilst a solution hasn’t been reached, Rothesay has made efforts to resolve the issue for Mr B. He has had a technician try to work with him to resolve it. And it has referred the problem to its IT service and tried to come up with solutions. It seems there has been fleeting success but for the portal to then crash again. I would find this incredibly

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frustrating and Mr B has explained how important this information is to him, as his annuity has been fluctuating, which he doesn’t understand, and he is reliant on these funds as income to live on. It seems since the complaint has been brought to us and following the investigator’s view, Mr B has attempted to get the information he required via email and this is what we would expect a business to do, to provide another route to this information for its customers where online access isn’t working. So I cannot say that Rothesay has acted unfairly in dealing with Mr B’s complaint or that it has made an error. It has made efforts to resolve the portal for Mr B and whilst this didn’t form part of the complaint, it is now seemingly providing the information in another format as we would expect. It seems the underlying issue for Mr B is his concerns about the annuity payments he is receiving and receiving confirmation of his payments each month. Regardless of the online portal’s availability, ReAssure should be able to provide this information to Mr B if requested. I understand that Mr B is sceptical about receiving this information going forward but we cannot consider a problem that hasn’t occurred yet. I do understand Mr B’s frustration but the problem he has brought to us isn’t something we are able to resolve. And I think ReAssure has tried to resolve it for him and appears now to be sending him the information in an alternative format, so I cannot say it has made an error. However, if the underlying issues regarding receipt of information and his concerns about his annuity payments still remain a problem in the future, Mr B should first contact Rothesay to complain about that and if he remains unhappy, he could then contact our service about this. My final decision For the reasons explained above, I am not upholding this complaint and make no award. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr B to accept or reject my decision before 27 April 2026. Simon Hollingshead Ombudsman

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