Nucleus Avis 

Very helpful

Nucleus has to be THE most pedantic & difficult pensions firm - being taken over by James Hay didn't help!

Example, I have changed by bank details using the bank switching service..simple - except for Nucleus. They wanted a certified bank statement of new account - who issues bank statements in this day & age? I advised I have the letter from my new bank which details my old AND new account details - they wanted that certified!!! I sent the original - which they seem to have lost.

EVERY single transaction / contact is protracted / awkward / difficult. Almost nothing can be done on line - they seem to operating in the 1990s! This is coming from an ex-employee in the financial service sector & I've seen the industry from the late 1980s.

I am highly dissatisfied with the administration of Nucleus Financial. A standard cash SIPP transfer to AJ Bell has now been outstanding for over three months since the initial instructions were safely received via Royal Mail recorded delivery.

Leaving a client's retirement funds in limbo for 90+ days completely breaches the spirit of the FCA Consumer Duty guidelines regarding unreasonable exit barriers.

Worse still, I issued a combined formal complaint to both my fund manager (Evelyn Partners) and the Nucleus Complaints Department early last week, (30/6/26).

While Evelyn Partners responded within 24 hours to formally launch an investigation, Nucleus has failed to even acknowledge the email.
This is a formal complaint matter regarding an unacceptable administrative delay and potential market detriment. I require an immediate update on when my funds will be sent to AJ Bell, along with my official complaint reference number.

Hopeless organisation. Delayed my pension payments for months and could not explain why, neither could they give any indication as to when payment would be made, leading to stress and significant costs to mitigate. Contradictory information from the help desk. Even the managers who were finally engaged could not meet their commitments to call back. Complaint was raised but even that was mismanaged. Avoid this organisation if you can.

Use of telephone contact with key data used for identification purposes saved the need for long written forms to identify the actions regarding combined changes in ISA disinvestment and receiving bank

It is nearly impossible to grasp the utter incompetence of nucleus Financial. I have finally after 10 weeks managed to obtain my transfer to my annuity provider. In total I have made over 30 phone calls/emils/portal messages in this process. Permission for my annuity broker was, would you believe, confirmed by letter from Nucleus over a week after the funds were transferred. So most of the "batting" was done by myself and my independent Financial Advisor.

Nucleus is designed for inertia. No department has any contact with any other department other than by email. It has taken over two weeks at a time to correct very simple issues like cancelling a pending direct debit or correcting an incorrect NI number. And this is after continual chasing. Everything is "escalated" but nothing seems to happen.

Even when Nucleus were finally dragged kicking and screaming to make the transfer, it was made incorrectly using an incorrect reference number so acknowledgment of receipt of funds took over a week longer than it needed to.

I have registered a complaint with the Pensions Ombudsman subject to a compensation claim and intend to report Nucleus to the FCA for fundamental flaws in their procedures.

Avoid like the plague!!!!!!

Very unhelpful staff on the live messaging service today from 'Heather'.

Clearly not happy that a client was asking questions directly to Nucleus about a large and important withdrawal which is running late with no explanation as to why.

This was made clear when she pointed out that live messaging was for "Quick Hit Queries" - presumably that means queries which don't require her to make any effort? I don't know.

In any case - a rather rude and evasive conversation with zero progress and a further delayed withdrawal.

For today Nucleus, you get zero stars.

My late mother's pension was held with James Hay Associates.

On her death that pension was to be split between myself and my two brothers: myself and one brother being resident in European countries.

The family's experience with James Hay was terrible.

Initially they said that giving the pension as per the will wasn't something that they were used to doing, especially if recipients weren't UK residents.

They were foot dragingly slow. The call centre cue was ponderous and their official representative was never available.

The official documents relating to residence that had been carefully colated and signed by our lawyers were ignored and 40% emergency tax was paid without our knowledge before the remaining payments were sent in dribs and drabs.

As a financial institution they appear to have zero knowledge of financial matters.

As an organisation, there is none; it's chaos.

On the positive side, at least we received some money; the complete unprofessionalism of James Hay Associates made me seriously wonder if we were going to receive anything at all.

I would give zero stars if Trustpilot allowed it.
My experience with Nucleus Financial Platforms Ltd has been nothing short of appalling. I submitted a fully completed instruction for my SIPP to be transferred in specie to another provider. At no point did I authorise the sale of my investments. Despite this, in April I discovered that Nucleus had authorised liquidation of my entire pension portfolio without my consent.
This unauthorised action has caused:
• loss of capital growth
• missed dividend payments
• delays preventing me from accessing my pension on my 60th birthday
• significant emotional distress
What makes this even harder to accept is that no one at Nucleus seems to care that this is my money — effectively my life savings — which I currently have no access to until they sort out their own mistakes.
Communication has been consistently poor. My formal complaint (submitted 30 April) remains unresolved. Nucleus even attempted to treat a later escalation as a “new” complaint, apparently to reset the FCA’s eight week deadline. My Data Subject Access Request was also sent late, is incomplete, and I have had to involve the Information Commissioner’s Office.
There is supposedly an “executive complaints” email address — but escalating to that level has still not produced a satisfactory response.
I will now be forced to escalate the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Based on my experience — and the many similar reviews here — Nucleus appears to have serious governance and operational issues. Their explanation that they are experiencing “higher than normal volumes of enquiries” following the launch of their new platform on 9 February 2026 does not excuse the scale of the failures I have encountered.
I would strongly urge anyone considering using Nucleus to proceed with extreme caution.

Personally I don't find Nucleus helpful in trying to resolve queries. This is slightly frustrating when the problem was an error on their part and I had to speak to different people and keep explaining the issue. A little more effort would have gone a long way.

I get endless emails from Nucleus Platform telling me the same stuff every month. I wrote to the ceo and got a reply saying it was difficult as they had implemented the switch close to year end. Do the big retail companies make majot changes in the months coming up to Christmas? No, they plan ahead. I trust you with my money and you plainly can't plan ahead.
I have more irrelevant emails from your company than I do from 3 other platforms. Just sort yourselves out.
You don't deserve 1 star. And get a new ceo who can sort out this mess, I don't need limp responses without improvement.

Dear Emma
You say my account has been unlocked. It hasn't. I spoke to your telephone people this morning who say it hasn't been unlocked. James Hay was bad enough but Nucleus is a disaster!

Nicole was very helpful and made transferring our funds very easy.

It took the best part of 2 months to invest in my grandsons' JISAs. We moved to a non-advised basis but the process was totally uncoordinated with multiple requests for new forms to be completed.

Our client is still waiting on a transfer to be processed to allow him to purchase an annuity. We have been given the wrong timescales on numerous occasions and am still waiting on work to be processed. The customer service agents are very helpful however the back office admin is recording their work items correctly and we are constantly provided with the wrong information.

If I could give zero stars then I would. 6 weeks after asking for a draw down from Fisher Investments, the money still hasn't even got into Nucleus let alone come out again. Apparently there is a problem with their platform after the James Hey merger. Surely this is a basic functionality. Absolutely dreadful.

You haven't sorted my issue yet so it's a bit premature to be asking for a review. I've been waiting since March.

Terrible organisation. Unresponsive. Slow. Hide behind their new platform. I am moving my large pension away from them because of loss of trust and how poor they have been handling basic things like pension top ups.

This review is being sent from the USA where I am once again located supporting a family member under going medical treatment. Nucleus is aware of this .
On June 10, 2026 I LOGGED into my Nucleus Account BUT DID NOT RECEIVE THE AUTHENTICATION EMAIL FOR WHICH I REQUESTED A RESEND. I NOW SEE A MESSAGE THAT " MY ACCOUNT IS LOCKED OUT BECAUSE OF NUMEROUS INCORRECT PASSWARD ATTEMPTS". THAT STATEMENT IS N O T C O R R E C T I was logged in but did not receive the email authentication message. I have sent 3 messages to NUCLEUS and each time received their AUTO reply da da large volumes etc and I can expect a response within 48 hours. I am still unable to LOGIN to my account in conditions that most professional market commentators would describe as extremely uncertain and volatile. There are no words to describe the absolutely abysmal customer service from NUCLEUS. I won't deal with it here but I still have my complaint of MARCH 12, 2026 still unresolved. This complaint I will now appeal to the Pension Ombudsman.

This is the worst platform around. I have been trying for 5 months to transfer my pension to a new platform and have experienced delay after delay. To make the transfer easy, I actually sold all my investments and moved them into two simple tracker funds but this has made no difference. I call them regularly to chase but no-one is able or willing to help. I have complained to the Nucleus CEO and issued a formal complaint. After 8 weeks they hadn't even completed reviewing my complaint so I have now escalated to the Pensions Ombudsman.

They recently even had the audacity to charge me an annual fee for 2026/27 three months after I served notice to move to a new platform. They recently moved to a new platform/re-branded themselves, so I don't know whether they are having systems issues.

Given how slow and incompetent they are, I would suggest that they re-brand themselves as HS2 rather than Nucleus!

AVOID AT ALL COSTS