Providence Avis 

I have been trying to make a withdrawal from my Providence Life account for over 6 weeks! They do not respond to my repeated requests and I fear my investments are lost. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!!!

Best investment bond in the market and incredible back office support. Jo is always responsive and I’ll continue using them going forward

Providence have been supporting me and my clients for 6 years in one capacity or another.

Over that time, I've seen the products upgraded, the costs for clients have gone down and their service levels have gone up.

I've been working with Providence for almost 8 years now and their service levels are excellent. Responsive team and superb account manager in Joanne Mongey. I look forward to doing more business with them for many years to come

Delighted with the service . Jo is incredible , gets back to me with queries quickly and is a pleasure to work with

Excellent company. I have dealt with Providence for many years and have many happy client's with their solutions. When Financial Adviser's aren't transparent with client's and don't explain the fees correctly, this can have a negative effect on Providence however this is not a Providence issue, this would be down the the adviser not explaining properly to their clients.

Providence provide brilliant solutions for expat's and give great loyalty bonuses to their clients.

Stay well away. Very very questionable ethics, unscrupulous with non too transparent fees, charges and commisions.
I am conducting a legal case against the hidden and undisclosed 1% Marketing fee on my pension policy. This is supported by my former FA at Devere. also STM are in bed with PLL. and collude. Up until 2016 all 3 entities were associated partners with NG and Devere via shareholdings.
Client claims have been sucessful in Malta, with the FSC Arbiter, Alfred Milfsud awarding in favour.

I have been saving since 2019 into compass saving with monthly deduction stable, but since then no growth at all, simply deduction of fees and no one follow to ensure policy performance, why do keep such policy with no growth at all. No clear at all what fees, deduction made on my policy, upon asking to withdraw, then threaten if huge lose ...

The Providence Life Compass plan has given me access to some of the best rated specialist funds and my returns over the last 7 years have been impressive. Their customer service team have been very helpful over the years. Overall a great experience.

After making contributions for 17 months (USD13,600), I only received a pitiful USD3,375.22. It's robbery in broad daylight.

I am an American expat living and running a business in the Philippines. We used Providence for a savings plan for our company due to the extremely low interest rates in the banks; we also wanted liquidity. Our financial planner, who previously worked for Devere (seeing a trend), recommended Providence Life. Now that we want to get some of the money, it has been more than a month now jumping through hoops to get it. Our financial planner’s emails and phone calls are either ignored, with no response, or very late response. I called our account Dubai-based Rep at Providence Life. When I called him personally and texted, he did not respond either. He only sent an email to my financial planner stating it is taking longer than usual to send us our money. There was no explanation why it is taking longer, or what he is doing to expedite the process, with an estimated time to be resolved. However, a week ago, he stated that the money was on its way and gave a date, which has passed already. My wife and I were suspicious this whole thing is a scam or Ponzi scheme until we read the reviews. Our business really needs this money now and this poor service and deceit from our rep at Providence Life has put us in a predicament. We were saving $10K/month. Thank God we already stopped putting money in 2 months ago, and we will never resume this savings after this experience. STAY AWAY!!

Just like reviews already written I was cheated firstly by the marketing fee fiasco and then subsequently by them splitting my investment into 10 separate funds again costing me around 10% of my investment. I know there is a court case but this is just straight fraud. They use an offshore centre like Mauritius to escape punishment

Similar experience to what has been listed below by many others.
Marketing fees taken and back dated several years with unacceptable response to my formal complaint. I have scrutinised all of my initial application documents which I signed and there is no reference to any marketing fee. It seems that you identified your error years after the policy was set up and are now modifying terms and conditions (which I did not sign) to justify your reason for taking more money out of my account. Do the right thing and return the fees and find a resolution between PLL, STM Malta and DeVere and consolidate from the gross profits you have made over the years.
Don’t waste your time responding to my review with the same box standard response. Please spend your time resolving this mess and return back the unauthorised Marketing fees which have taken from my account.
Also very disappointed with the lack of interest shown by DeVere Customer Services who provided very little help in this matter.

For those clients or potential clients taking comfort from the fact that Providence Life is regulated, be aware that their business falls outside the jurisdiction of the Ombudsperson of the FS of Mauritius.

Providence handling customers and customer care is very slow and poor.

The banking wire charges from Mauritius (they have decided to move the fund to Mauritius) are a 5% haircut on every Regular Income or Pension payment for there customers!

The products are not the least expensive but the team at Providence has been very responsive. No qualms.

I have now been waiting three months 20 plus emails and there seems no end to endless requirements Providence are requesting to enable me to close my account and return my funds from this Saving Plan. Which by the way they are also making huge deductions and all because they have not been unable to take the premium payments from my bank in the UK.

I would strongly recommend anyone wishing to start a savings plan not to choose this Provider.

They're clowns with compliance ruining their business. I provided all the information required for AML/KYC. More than what most UK high-street financial institutions have asked for (I had 12 different checks this year so I have a good comparison). I had a single transaction from over 12 months ago where I transferred money from my local bank (as an expat) to my main bank (big UK brand). They wanted to see the statement of the local bank despite the UK bank having all the details on the statement. Unfortunately I was no longer was a customer of that bank and didn't have the statement, so I arranged a letter from the UK bank stating UBO and sending bank code. Still not cleared.

Avoid them. They don't want your business. The whole process has been 2+ months of back and forth. I've had enough. If this is how they start, then I can imagine being with them for 10+ years will be nothing but pain.

All this for someone who is low risk with a verifiable history with good standing at many institutions in UK, Europe and Australia.

Their response to this will probably be something along the lines of "we take AML/KYC seriously and need to comply with regulations...blah blah....". Don't believe them, they actually have no idea what they are doing or what the regulations actually are.

Move on. Choose someone else.

The whole circle is a rip off, DeVere take their cut (which I don't have a problem with) STM take their 1%, for what? it's not for protecting us and PLL another 1% for..... once again what?

I today received an email from STM stating that they are investigating the 8% charge from PLL which was not included in the original contract I signed with PLL, however although STM are taking step it seems that they have reservations.
Here is a quote from the email STM sent today
" We STM, have committed ourselves not to go through normal court proceedings, because such proceedings will prove to drag on and be overly expensive".
They have been taking 1% from everyone's account for years, why don't they spend it and get our money back by any means possible. As for DeVere they advised us on PLL why did they not A) spot the problem B) Give us a explanation straight away as to what this charge was (we had to ask) and C) no mention of DeVere acting on our behalf against PLL.
I feel let down by DeVere, STM and PLL over this whole fiasco.

Thank you to Providence for the reply on Trustpilot & the email. An error in the level of bank charges has been identified but I disagree with this statement from Providence: "Providence does not have any control over the bank charges as these are charged by the intermediary banks". I have a lot of experience making international payments & I know that it is possible for the payer to specify who should suffer bank charges. Providence can't walk away from this. I was receiving my full pension until April 2022. Thereafter there has been a 13.5% reduction & this is fundamentally WRONG! I shouldn't suffer because Providence have moved their banking to Mauritius