Endowment Policy to mature this month with Phoenix

Lelc

We have an endowment policy that is due to mature this month. The endowment policy is now with Phoenix and they wrote to us to advise us that it will mature in September and what the projected payout is likely to be.

The mortgage for this endowment policy was with the Burnley Building Society in 1983 and was for £12000. We sold that house back in 1985 but continued with the endowment policy. We took out a new endowment policy (with a different insurer) when we bought our current property in 1988 but continued with the endowment policy from Phoenix (I think it was originally RSA).

Our current property needed quite a bit of improvement work so we took out a home improvement loan with Bank of Scotland for £11000 and used the Phoenix endowment policy as security. We had thought that the original policy documents were lodged with Bank of Scotland when we took out the loan but they are now saying that they don't have them and they would no longer be needed for security purposes anyway.

Phoenix sent us a letter advising us that, according to their records, Abbey National may have a claim on the policy. However, since then they have written again to say that Abbey National can find no record of us but we need to provide them (Phoenix) with the original policy documents (which we do not have). They then advised us that we need to get a letter from Abbey National to say they do not have a claim on the policy.

We rung Phoenix to explain that we have never had an account of any sort with Abbey National let alone a mortgage and that will be why Abbey National don't have any record of us but they insist that we must get a letter from Abbey National.

How on earth are we supposed to resolve this? If Abbey have never heard of us then surely they cannot provide us with a letter. How do we get Phoenix to release our money?

I hope all that makes sense and I'd be grateful for any advice you can give.

dunstonh

All Abbey need to do is write a letter to say that they have no claim to the policy. Its a common enough request as years ago assignment took place on virtually all policies. That ceased in the mid 90s and as people have moved mortgages over the years, it is normal the assignment to be no longer required.

You may find the odd staff member at Abbey hasnt got a clue what to do so you may need to get them to refer it higher up the line or speak to someone else.

Lelc

Many thanks dunstonh. I was getting a bit worried that Phoenix were trying to hold onto our money which we need as it covers the shortfall in our current endowment. I'll get in touch with Abbey tomorrow.