life insurance rip off

willowman15

Can any give me some advice. when we first took out our morgage some 18 years ago we were sold some life insurance so we could get the morgage, that started off with low payments and would increase each year with inflation, this has been ok for us over the years as the payments when we stared were about £32.00. now they are £ 42.07. not bad over 18 years, with the life cover being £78,000.
but now they want to increase the monthly payment to £95.54 to keep the same cover or to keep the same monthly payment that we pay now our live cover would be £34,000.
on the letter is states the the policy can be cashed in so i phone them to enquire and was told i would get back if i sold the policy £904. not a fat lot considering ive paid them for the last 18 years.
i was also sold a morgage protection policy which pays our morgage if i should pass away or cricical illness, which ive got with the life insurane. can you have 2 policy's that are indentical? would both pay out?.
does anyone know if i can make a claim for being sold a policy that would reduce its value so much with out me knowing.
thanks
barry ( willowman15 )

roguebrogue

You can have more than 1 life cover policy, as long as they are paid up to date then both would pay out.

dunstonh

not a fat lot considering ive paid them for the last 18 years.

Of course it isnt. That isnt the point of the policy.

i was also sold a morgage protection policy which pays our morgage if i should pass away or cricical illness, which ive got with the life insurane. can you have 2 policy's that are indentical? would both pay out?.

yes they would.

does anyone know if i can make a claim for being sold a policy that would reduce its value so much with out me knowing.

No.

The policy you have is a life assurance policy with an investment element. The idea was that if the investments did well, the returns would be used to pay for the increased cost of life assurance as you got older. These plans did not average it out over the term but costed you annually with review points either every 5 years or annually from year 10 or other variations.

These plans were popular with the likes of Abbey Life, Allied Dunbar and the AXA salesforces.

The problem is that they based these returns on high inflation periods of the 70s and 80s and returns didnt match so you have to pay more yourself if you want to keep it.

The plans themselves are almost certainly obsolete and can be improved upon. However, the CI conditions on old plans can be very attractive compared to modern plans (as well as worse in some cases) so you would need to consider that.

You have not been mis-sold. The products were just a sign of the times. A complaint would be like complaining that Currys sold you a black and white TV in 1960 instead of a HDTV plasma.