In Reply to: Re: Protect your Equitable Life AVC fund by ... posted by Deborah Young on 20 August 2002 at 13:10:59:
......... one other thought Deborah. I hope it's useful.
You may want to go back to Adrian, and (assuming from your post I have assumed roughly your service length correctly places you into the automatic AVC into EL period) you might want to remind him that it was IBM's idea to place your AVC funds into Equitable. You may say that you understand that it did so in good faith and that whilst they have offered some unpalatable choices recently to transfer it - at a lower value - to other funds - the least that IBM could do - and it would be at very little cost if anything - was to take it's current value back from EL and look after it until you wanted to retire.
If there is still a refusal perhaps you should ask that under these circumstances what are the procedures for appealing against the trustees decision as it was them that got you into the predicament.
The other choice is there has been a "wrinkle" where other insurance companies will take the transfer as though they were paying an immediate annuity to you to take advantage of any differential MVA that EL imposes (ie one for transfers and a lower for retirees) - but then actually defer paying you. I'm not saying that this is honourable - only that it has been known to happen.
G.