Nucleus Financial Arvostelua 1 006

I am only giving them 1 star as there isn't the option for zero stars.

Over a period of three months, my pension payments have been delayed, missed, or processed incorrectly despite clear instructions. I’ve also had unauthorised transactions on my account and have been forced to use personal savings to cover essential expenses.
Communication has been inconsistent and unreliable, including being lied to and no one has taken ownership of resolving the issue. To make matters worse, my formal complaint has disappeared from their secure messaging system.
This is not a minor issue, this is my retirement income. The lack of control and accountability is alarming.
I would not trust this provider to manage critical financial arrangements.Completely unacceptable for a pension provider. Avoid.

Complaints Team have set formatted replies. Ignore as pointless referrals to their phone line/ teams.
All complaints here are dealt with by an online monitoring team ( Emma/ Angela).
They use stock wording.
My accounts ( and thus pension) have been a total shambles since February. This damaged my finances for 3 months. To date I have logged 30 expensive calls to Nucleus; countless messages and emails. An incompetent and inept company.
Last week my first formal complaint was upheld. But the compensation sum offered was derisory considering my loss of time, expense, and stress over 3 months. I rejected the offer.
Nucleus launched a poor, unusable site. They did not switch James Hay information across correctly. They could not cope with workload. They are still rebooting and fixing many months after launch.
In short, disgraceful management involving millions of pounds of pensioners' funds.
AVOID.

I needed help logging on having not used the portal for nearly 10 years (after retiring)
I received simple , logical help delivered in a calm professional manner.

Very slow service, account had not been monitored for about 10 years. Still awaiting to hear from my complaint which was lodged. Seriously looking to move to a company with better service lost all confidence in them.
Takes over 6 week to withdraw a small drawn down amount of money, not in this day and with the modern technology. Not impressed in the slightest.

Still awaiting my payment from my pension. It has taken a long time from the initial request on 12 March via yourselves and my Financial advisor. Did not think the process would take this long.
My partner withdraws from his pension with Standard Life online, speedily and effectively!

I contacted you re my Financial Advisor having access to my Nucleus Account ,you refused them due to my specimen online signature did not match the one on your files. I passed all your security questions and added fir you to grant my FA access. This has not happened and No-one from Nucleus has contacted me to update me.Very disappointed.

It took 2 weeks to Register

They recommended the unbiased website to help me locate a financial advisor

The ongoing saga I’m having with James Hay/ Nucleus is beyond belief.Ive been trying to get my Property SIPP money moved to a cash SIPP. This has been ongoing for 9 months. Has anybody succeeded with this , seemingly, monumental task?The head of complaints, Clara, sent me an email , this morning, say that, as they hadn’t answered my formal complaint, I could refer this matter to the Ombudsman.This isn’t the point, I just want my pension money.
Is anyone else experiencing similar problems? There is a Facebook page called nucleus financial , which is worth a look as there are many more of us

Very slow - still don't have access to client

My financial adviser sent a lump sum payment on the 19th February. From a converstion with Nucleus yesterday those funds are still sat on a back office account. April pension payment not made.
A further lump sum was sent to Nucleus on the 1st April to cover an ad hoc payment and again the funds I am told have been received but not applied to my account. No payment made.
I noticed yesterday 20th April that the diarised monthly pension payment has been deleted. This morning I set up the payment again, in the hope it will be paid at the earliest the 5th May, as that was the date their system would allow.
Since the takeover of James Hay, it has been a complete nightmare.
I am concerned that my credit rating will be destroyed should my bank, bounce a monthly payment: mortgage loan etc...
PS: I have made numerous phone calls and sent several messages all to no avail.

Called to get tech support this morning and spoke with Simone. She was super helpful and enabled me access to the platform with ease. Call was answered within seconds too. Great customer service. Thank you Simone.

Dear Emma
Thank you for your reply last Friday. I prefer to keep my complaint in the public eye, rather than it be lost in the world of James Hay/Nucleus. Asking me to email you at ask@... so the email doesn't get answered anyway is not on. I have been emailing our "single point of contact", (Carla de Gouveia) virtually daily with no response. There is no "out of office" response. I asked if Carla was still there and told yes. So why no response? The accounts also - my wife and I have an on-going battle with the accounts department and despite promising a reply "in a few days" some 4 months ago, no reply has been received. I sent a reminder a week ago. No response. No out of office reply. This email was sent to Claire Haynes, Property technician. Please chase these people up and ask them to give the courtesy of a response, even if it is to say "go away!".

What you people don't seem to realise is that if you cured 2 reasons for complaints you would cut your 1 star reviews by 90%. Those two complaints are;
1; Respond to queries in a timely manner! My last formal complaint took over 6 months to get a response.
and
2: Pay people their money in a reasonable time.

I look forward to responses.

At last, you people have transferred funds from our property account to my, and my wife's, individual account. But not enough. No explanation. This is made doubly worse now as the new "system" doesn't give a balance figure - just ins and outs. At least the James Hay system gave a balance figure.

I wanted to express , the help and assistance I received from 2 of the customer service team Hope and ishika for their help with some. Problems I was experiencing they were both extremely patient and helpful

So far Nucleus/James Hay have been awful and a massive let down & disappointment. I am awaiting transferral of my pension funds to a life assurance company. I have been waiting for this to happen since September 2025. Hence the awful comment.

The James Hay offshore bond department has been beyond awful at the moment. If the CEO is reading this, please get in touch if you want to avoid an almighty complaint and regulatory report to the FCA. 020 7625 1661

was not payed pension when changed from James hay no up date since February not responding to massages have in formed tax office of amounts not received said tax office was at felt but they sent the amounts because account has had payments taken sales not done and no up dates to accounts i don't no what i have in my pension 8 years with James hat not one problem

The headline is that on February 6th I requested a withdrawal from the tax free cash element of my pension. Nucleus received the request the following Monday - 9th Feb. As of today, 9 working weeks later, I have not received the money and they cannot confirm when it will be paid.
I first rang for an update on 12th March and was advised that they were awaiting a fund value from the investment management company. They acknowledged that due to issues with migration to the Nucleus platform (I was previously a James Hay customer) there had been a delay but they couldn't provide any other update. I subsequently spoke to the investment manager who confirmed no such request had been received but proactively sent it to Nucleus the same day. On the call with Nucleus I also asked to speak to a manager about the service to date but was told it wasn't possible and so registered a complaint.
I subsequently spoke with my financial advisor and asked them to seek some progress on my behalf. They have since chased on multiple occasions but have apparently been unable to obtain a meaningful update or get clarity on a payment date. They established however that Nucleus had requested the funds from the investment manager twice so are holding double the amount I require! I have since verified this direct with Nucleus and despite repeated requests they cannot explain why.
On Tuesday morning (7th April) I rang to request an update and Alistair promised he would investigate and call-back. By late Wednesday afternoon no-one had called so I rang them again. On this call Graham told me he didn't know why they'd requested the money twice, nor could he advise when the payment might be made. On this call I again asked to speak to a manager and was again told it wasn't possible but that he could raise a manager call-back request and that I should receive a call by close of business today (10th). By 4:30pm today I hadn't received a call and so rang them again. This time Ben told me that whilst my case had been escalated for the 3rd time, no manager call-back request had been raised. As expected he also confirmed that he couldn't explain why they'd requested the money twice and once again couldn't give me even an indication of when I'd receive my payment. Apparently it is with an admin team which is separate to the contact centre and they are not able to speak to them directly. When I asked for a manager call-back he told me there's no point as they won't be able to provide any more information and would probably "know less than I do". I therefore asked to speak to the complaints team but that's also not possible as they don't take calls. So I registered a second complaint about the failed call-back.
Regarding the complaint made on March 12th, Nucleus acknowledged it via email on 19th March and sent an update on 8th April saying that they aim to respond at the earliest opportunity but no later than 06 May 2026 i.e. the day before the 8 week deadline.
I believe that my experience is influenced by issues connected to the migration of James Hay customers to the Nucleus platform and also by backlogs in the admin team. Contact Centre folks have confirmed both without being able to provide detail.
In summary, 9 weeks after receiving the request, despite requesting the funds twice and holding almost double the amount required for the last month, Nucleus cannot / will not provide even an indication of when I will receive my money. And as any request to speak to someone who might actually be able to accelerate it is blanked, I feel completely powerless. I have no option other than to wait until they choose to progress it.
For anyone considering using Nucleus - DON'T. SAVE YOURSELF THE TIME YOU'LL SPEND CHASING THEM, THE FRUSTRATION WHEN YOU CAN'T GET ANY ANSWERS, THE FEELING OF HELPLESSNESS BECAUSE YOU CAN'T BREAK THROUGH THEIR INTERNAL PROCESSES AND THE HUGE STRESS WHICH RESULTS.

Update on 26/04/2026:
The payment was finally made on 22nd April, almost 11 weeks. I still haven't received a reply to my complaints. And despite writing a letter to the CEO on 14th April, haven't even received an acknowledgement.
I will await a reply but based on other reviews, I'm not expecting it to be to my satisfaction.

Firstly …. Getting access to an advisor was quick , simple and reassuring.
Having expressed my lack of experience in all IT matters your advisor , HANNAH, was interested , informative and very knowledgeable in her responses.
My enquiry related to the issue of the normal end of year P60 … and Hannah resolved my concerns in a light-hearted way that was much appreciated . WELL DONE HANNAH.

An update, - I transferred £10,000 on 19 February on the Nucleus platform, to their broker service provider, Eqi.

The money hasn't been seen since. Nucleus blame Eqi and Eqi blame Nucleus. All I know is that I'm £10,000 down and neither of them seem willing or able to fix it.

Anyone thinking of setting up an account at Nucleus, just don't. Please, for your own sanity, don't do it.