The good, the bad or the ugly Endowments?

Inga

How can you find out which companies are doing well and which are the poor performers without reading what it says on their own web sites - they would say they are doing well wouldn't they.

I have a Scottish Life policy and can't work out what to do with it by reading the Scottish Life web pages. I am an intelligent financially savvy woman but just keep burying my head in the sand with this issue because it is just too confusing.

EdInvestor

Post some info about your policy

Guaranteed sum assured
Declared bonuses
Surrender value
Monthly premium
Maturity date
Maturity forecasts
Interest rate payable on mortgage.

Inga

Guaranteed sum assured Is this the same as Guaranteed Death Benefit? this is £55,000, same as the target amount.
Declared bonuses It is a Unit linked policy, I don't think it has bonuses??
Surrender value I haven't got a current surrender value, the plan value as at 28/2/08 was £13,172
Monthly premium £74.32
Maturity date 11/10/16
Maturity forecasts at 11/2/08 4% £24300 8% £32,800
Interest rate payable on mortgage 5.23% tracker for life

The plan is invested in Managed Fund (1889 units) and Worldwide (1510 units)
From info on this site I thought it was better to look at the other funds available and move it around a bit, as I can have one free move a year, but this is where I get totally lost and I don't want to make a bad situation worse. Would you agree with this?

EdInvestor

Please update the plan value/surrender value and maturity forecasts (do you have one at 6%?) as there has been a lot of activity in the stockmarket this year. . They should do this on the phone.

Inga

Finally got the information you asked for;

The surrender value is £12,943

Forecasts are 4% £23,800
6% £27,650
8% £31,500

Has anyone any tips for choosing which funds to swap the units into for best returns (if it is best to keep the policy going for the remaining few years)

EdInvestor

Inga wrote: »

Forecasts are 4% £23,800
6% £27,650
8% £31,500

if you cashed it in now and used the lump sum to reduce the mortgage @5.2%, also increasing the mortgage payment by the amount of the premium to maturity, you would end up with a return of 28,250. That's a risk free return.

Your returns from the endowment are being reduced by the cost of the life cover, by tax and by charges, often quite high on these obsolete policies. The modern replacement is an ISA.