The Pensions Ombudsman has been receiving “a very high volume of calls” following its cyber incident.
The Ombudsman has faced a number of delays after it made its application forms and live chat temporarily unavailable when it investigated a cyber incident back in June.
It was working with the relevant agencies, including the National Cyber Security Centre to deal with it.
A spokesperson for the Ombudsman said: “The cyber incident happened at the beginning of June. As a precautionary measure, access to some systems was disabled which temporarily impacted on our ability to deliver services and manage enquiries from the public.
“Our priority has been to restore services securely and safely and we are pleased to confirm that key services were restored earlier this month.”
However, since then, the ombudsman has been experiencing a number of delays.
One individual told FTAdviser that they lodged two separate referrals with the Pension Ombudsman in November 2021 and has been told it will take at least another 12-18 months for it to be passed to the next stage which will not even be the decision stage.
FTAdviser understands that since the cyber incident, phone lines are very busy and only open 10am to 2pm on weekdays.
The spokesperson added: “Naturally, since services have been restored, we have been experiencing a very high volume of calls and enquiries and are focused on working through these recent enquiries and applications.
“This may cause some delays and we apologise for the inconvenience this may cause. In the meantime, wherever possible, we will use our discretion to expand the time limits for new applicants affected by the current situation if it has not allowed them to apply within the usual time limits.”
The Ombudsman said it does not provide average times for cases to be resolved as this can vary based on the complexity of the case and the circumstances of an individual member.
However, it said 74 per cent of its overall pension complaints were closed within 12 months.
“Over recent years we have seen a continued rise in demand for our services,” it said.
“This has resulted in customer waiting times for our free service becoming longer than we would like, and we have been working with DWP to tackle this and to reduce waiting times.”
sonia.rach@ft.com
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