Mis-sold endowment as a young greenhorn

trancebabe

Need your help you wonderful people... sit back and read on

Back in 1987, I was buying my first house for £43,000 with my fiance and the financial advisor at the estate agent we were buying through told us this wonderful tale of how in 2012, we would have our morgage paid and approx £20 in our pockets... never once did he say it could all go to rats%@*

Marvellous right... we signed up with Royal Sun Alliance and paid £56.44 / month.

Since then, we moved house (1996) and went for a repayment mortgage but I kept the endowment going. My marriage then crumbled and as part of the divorce I kept the endowment, because it was me paying it.

Last year I moved again and have recently taken a good look at the endowment statement I received this year :eek: which obviously no longer promises to give me the same return and in fact makes very grim reading indeed.

I don't have the original docs, I think ex hubby must have trashed them somewhere along the way but I have some more recent statements from Phoenix who know run the policy.

Questions on this to start with are:

1) My previous name and my ex husbands name are still on the policy so if anything happens to me - he will receive the benefit (I have 2 kids and a new husband who I want to receive this) How do I go about changing the policy ?

2) How do I get going on the complaints process? Do I start by writing to the Estate Agent?

3) Do I keep the policy or look to sell / cash it in ?? - I've paid about £15K into it by now and am only expected to receive about £23K back for my time :think:

Advice greatly appreciated

Trancex

dunstonh

1) My previous name and my ex husbands name are still on the policy so if anything happens to me - he will receive the benefit (I have 2 kids and a new husband who I want to receive this) How do I go about changing the policy ?

Your solicitor should have arranged an assignment on the policy when the terms and settlement of the divorce were sorted. As it stands now, you need your ex-husband to agree for the policy to be assigned to you.

2) How do I get going on the complaints process? Do I start by writing to the Estate Agent?

you dont. Regulation didnt come in until 29th April 1988 so you cannot complain unless you used a tied sales rep.

Even if you could, endowments didnt start to get off track until 1999-2000 time and you ceased to link it to the mortgage in 1996. So, at that point you were probably financially better off and its that point which matters. Not what it has done since then.

You may also fail the time bar rule as well. Especially if you changed it in 1996 because you were concerned over future returns.

3) Do I keep the policy or look to sell / cash it in ?? - I've paid about £15K into it by now and am only expected to receive about £23K back for my time

You cant do anything until your ex husband agrees to assign it to you solely. I would worry about getting that sorted first.