Endowment problems

mickw_4

I wonder if anyone can help,I have been told like many others my endowment will fall short but when I enquired about it being badly advised I have been told there is nothing I can do as I took the mortgage out in 1987 and this is before the FSA existed and there is nothing I can do .Can anyone advise me what I should and is there any companies out there who would take up my case and not rip me off.

Thanks
Mick

Froggitt

If it was sold by a Bank, Building Society, or major LifeCo, they will treat your complaint as if it was post FSA. Look at the Which endowment complaint site for a standard letter......dont pay someone 25% of your compo for writing a letter.

defender_of_the_weak

Froggitt wrote:

If it was sold by a Bank, Building Society, or major LifeCo, they will treat your complaint as if it was post FSA. Look at the Which endowment complaint site for a standard letter......dont pay someone 25% of your compo for writing a letter.

Sadly not exactly true. Many of the major banks and building societies turn down complaints because 'the duty of care was lower' and 'we did not give advice, we only provided figures and you made an informed choice'. Neither of which is a true reflection of the sales practices at the time.

Are the reviewers merely mis-guided, or poorly trained like the advisers who sold these in the first place or is this a form of corporate fraud? I am sure people can work this out for themselves.

Froggitt

OK OK - what I should have said was that they would consider you complaint, whereas independent IFAs wont.

Big Hal accepted my 1989 endowment was missold but turned down my 1987 claim....until of course I went to the FOS who told them to stump up......I believe it was the fact that they had a duty of care (single guy, 23, no dependents, no stockmarket investments.......and yet they suggested I gamble my house!!!) that made the FOS tell them to compensate me.

x_sneeky_x

Hello, my name is Suze and I'm new to the site and the forum.

I have a question about endowments. First off, even though they send me Red Alert letters, I don't think I was miss-sold mine. I knew at the time past performance was no guarantee for the future,but we couldn't afford the repayment mortgage repayments, so we didn't really have an option. A few years back we changed to a daily rate repyment mortgage so the endowment is a bit superfluous as far as being our only way of clearing the final mortgage.

But, now I'm just not sure if I should be doing something about this policy?

It's with Scottish widows and will mature in 2017. By then I will have paid in £18k over 25 years (£60 per month) and I'm predicted to get back £24-31k, compared with the original target of £44k. So I have another £8.5k to pay to them, for which all I'm really getting is life cover and if I'm lucky the money back. What do people think I could do? Can I freeze it, or am I better off sticking with the thing and seeing it to the bitter end?

Anyway, any thoughts welcome
Suze

dunstonh

It's with Scottish widows and will mature in 2017. By then I will have paid in £18k over 25 years (£60 per month) and I'm predicted to get back £24-31k, compared with the original target of £44k. So I have another £8.5k to pay to them, for which all I'm really getting is life cover and if I'm lucky the money back. What do people think I could do? Can I freeze it, or am I better off sticking with the thing and seeing it to the bitter end?

Get an IFA to review the policy. Not all endowments are bad and some Scot Widows endowments allow unit linked funds to be available and some of the life funds offered by Scot Wid are quite desirable and offer good future potential.

The charges, allocation rates, funds, life cover cost etc will have to be reviewed for a proper analysis to take place.

EdInvestor

Hi x-sneeky

Is it a With profits policy?

If so post the Guaranteed sum assured,attaching bonuses and surrender value and we'll have a look.

x_sneeky_x

Hi, thanks for the replies, this is very helpful.

Yes,I think it is a with profits bonus policy. The Guaranteed sum is what I think they call the Basic Sum Assured(?) and this reads £15k, Existing Bonus is £3.3k and it doesn't give me a surrender value.

Thanks again
Suze

dunstonh

Scot Widows With profits fund isnt great. So investigating if the rest of the Scot wid funds are available to you is certainly something that needs to be done.

EdInvestor

Hi Suze,

You'll need to ring them up to get the Surrender value. Can't say anything meaningful without knowing it.