Funny investing story... (annuity, brokerage, corporation, payment)

[slyfox2]

About a decade ago, we bought a house, and needed to close down our Swiss Annuity account and have the money transferred back into my bank to pay for the down payment.

We had been drawing down the annuity for college educations for awhile. There was no penalty for taking out anything up to the original amount put into it, and despite their prostrations that it would grow by 6% a year it had only grown 2% in the 5 years we had it.

So we called a company called J Jurg Lattman and talked to Nicole who was our manager for this. Lattman was handling the transfer operations for La Swisse Insurance Corporation and other management for the insurance company. Nicole politely informed me that La Swisse decided they didn't want to pay Lattman anymore and would do it themselves, and gave me their number direct.

So I called them. They were friendly and asked for the wire transfer number and I gave it to them. There was dead silence. I asked them what was wrong and they said that their form only had boxes for 9 numbers---which meant that they couldn't wire anything out Europe.

For the next 6 weeks I talked with and emailed increasingly higher ups in the company until I eventually reached the president. No one could do anything. I would get these cc messages from the higher ups telling the lowers to get me off his back, but the lowers could do nothing because their form could not be changed because the computers would only recognize 9 numbers.

I thought I was going to have to fly over there.

Finally I had a bright idea. I went to my local bank branch manager and asked if they didn't have a corresponding bank in Zurich. Of course they did, and sure they could have opened an account for me in it, but that was only for million dollar plus bank deposits. But they made an exception for me, and it turned out that the corresponding bank in Zurich was literally next door to the La Swisse Insurance company. And I had my money in less than 2 days.

Funny now 9 years later. Exasperating then. Typical of dealing with banks brokerage houses, etc. If you haven't had a glitch like this yet, eventually, when you can least use it, you will.