Act now on mis-sold endowments: new article

misinformed

Thanks everyone who replied put my mind at ease as one mortgage seems to be ok and other not too bad. Thanks for offer of working it out for me interest rate is 7.75% premium £73.01 finishes Jan 2011

rambo65

zippedup wrote: »

rambo

my husband and i had an endowment with colonial who then changed name to winterther. we havent proceeded anything yet.

can anyone advise me if its too late now?

Hi
Just got your message did you enquire re endownment? It should be ok if its before 3years

rambo65

ipaqowner wrote: »

After having my complaint for mis-selling an endowment mortgage rejected by Winterthur Life UK Ltd and no result from a "no win no fee" company I have now received, out of the blue, a letter from Winterthur who would like to reconsider their decision. With this letter they have sent a questionnaire and at the end of this they give me 2 options.
"Option A" is any loss is calculated using the Halifax Standard Variable Rate and "Option B" is my exact mortgage details used in the calculation.
They cannot advise which option I should select and I am therefore in the dark as to which one would be more beneficial to me.
Could anyone help explain the difference and which one would suit me best please?.

I have also just rcved the same letter - how did you go about replying we are at a total loss here

rambo65

dunstonh wrote: »

It could be a few reasons. Maybe during a compliance visit from the FSA, there were failings in their checking and they were "asked" to review past cases. Or perhaps an individual they used for checking was found to have made mistakes on cases and all his/her cases are being reviewed. That is normal with complaints - a sample of similar is checked and if found to have occured often, then all cases will get reviewed again.

Dont get too exited yet though. Redress payments are much lower today than a few years back as endowments have recovered and many are getting back on track or heading to surplus (although some are getting worse and have no hope of recovery).

Wait until you know the figure before you go out and treat yourself

We spoke last months and I had just wrote in again asking them to change their mind re our morgage as our daughter was very ill at the time and we had left it too late anyway they refused and now we have also rcvd same letter from winterthur

ipaqowner

rambo65 wrote: »

how did you go about replying we are at a total loss here

My wifes still to do it, she's bumped into a financial advisor who works in an adjacent office and she's been giving her some advice so I'll report back when I know what she's doing.

bibendum_2

I have a endowment problem that I hope someone on this great site will be able to advise me about.

Original mortgage/endowment took out in 1988 through Halifax. Extended in 1990 due to onset of children and then extended in 1993 after another addition to family.

At each stage of consultations, was told that endowments way to go and that at end of term all mortgage paid off and extra lump sum in my pocket.

But then the alert warnings start coming through, so I claim mis-sold policies at Halifax. First one rejected as it was done by an agency who were working though Halifax at that time, second one got offer of £750 pound (good result) and third one again informed other agency involved.

Standard Life passed me details of other agencies who were involved with set up of accounts, but have now found after 2 years chasing these mystery men that they do not exist anymore.

Can anyone inform me on what action to take now?

ELLIS_RA

In 1994, I took out a low cost endowment based on advice given by a company of solicitors (via their financial services manager) to cover a mortgage for the sum of £48,000.

After receiving my 3rd RED warning letter from Standard Life (worst case shortfall of £21,000) , I decided after reading information on this site,to put in a claim for endowment mis-selling on the basis that they failed to inform me that the mortgae may not be paid of at the end of the term.

After a number of correspondences with the company of Solicitors, and a total duration of 5 months, I have received a letter stating that their insurers have reviewed my case and have instructed the solicitors to write to me to reject my complaint.

In the letter they statat that they are unable to find the file from the time of the sale, but continue to state that they assume the correct processes / procedures were followed (ie risk identified, fact find performed etc) but with no means of backing these assumptions up (ie documentary evidence). They also mention that I have not provided them with any evidence of the advice given.

I have responded to theire letter, stating that it is not me who has to provide evidence of mis-selling but it is they who have to prove the endowment was not mis-sold. As they are not able to provide written evidence of the advice provided I have rejected their findings.

I have been told that I have the right to refer my complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

Am I correct in stating that it is they who have to prove the endowment was not mis-sold, rather than me proving it was

Has any one else had to make a complaint to the SRA and how did the process go

Should I also complain to the FSA

timbur

Responding to "A Contrary View". The argument that anyone interested in this site would possess the savvy to see throught the sales pitch made by the building society/bank adviser misses the point entirely. People become interested in this type of site because they have learned bitter lessons from their past. In the 1980`s ordinary people generally trusted the building society adviser/IFA (who of course they met only once, twice or three times, as they moved up the housing ladder) and, however competent they were in their own chosen field, they might realise they were not very good at maths, and that they did not really understand the jargon that was so freely used. They did not think they had to be. It never occurred to them that major institutions would, in the 1980`s, set out to dupe customers who had been with them as mortgagors their whole house- ownership life. That they would conceal the fact that they had earned commission on the sale of endowment policies sold some years earlier, and then calmly churn the same polices, describing them as being poor products. They did this solely to gain a commercial advantage, earn another commission. The damage they did was enormous and the true analogy is with vandalism.To gain a small reward they cost customers thousands of pounds. If they had stolen the money from a savings account the adviser would have gone to prison. The loss they caused had the same consequence for the customer but the adviser took no risks. One major building society secured a tie with a huge endowment provider, the nature of which was a closely guarded secret. Thus, when it vigorously sold that providers products, the customer would be unaware that they did so for double the usual commission rates. One might speculate, in the run up to the contract for that tie, the extent to which that providers products were aggressively sold to ensure the major building society secured that contract.

The customer would not anticipate that the same building society would shred the primary documents a soon as the law permitted, and then say: "Sorry, we would love to examine this case but, sadly, the lack of documentation..." That they will then fight a fierce rearguard action which has the effect of tiring you out.That they would lose documents you supplied to them, make false promises that they are searching out documents from third parties to help decide the case, imply that you are bringing a dishonest complaint, against which, because of the lack of documentation, they are powerless to defend. But, if you keep digging long enough, and use the Data Protection Act to obtain documents (not forgetting the Land Registry who are often a great help) you will win. It is not about money and it certainly is no fun-it is about justice. Not to fight is worse than letting them get away with it. So I say to "A Contrary View"- site readers like us were made not born. Some of us were made in Halifax.

webwiz wrote: »

A contrary view.
I find it hard to believe that anyone savvy enough to be interested in this site would really buy a low cost endowment believing that it guaranteed to pay off a mortgage. It was absolutely clear that the final payout amount was not specified at the start, so the blindingly obvious question that anybody with any senses would ask is "well what is the minimum?".

It might seem that it is a good thing for the "little man" if big insurance companies pay them compensation even if it is not really deserved, but this is not correct. The compensation will, in the final analysis, be paid by other little men through lower endowment proceeds, higher premiums, losses in pension funds holding the shares of the insurance companies.

Insurance companies are being forced to pay compensation if they cannot prove that they warned customers that the target amount was not guaranteed and few have good enough record keeping to be able to do that after many years.

I also find it iniquitous that cash compensation is being paid. Even if someone was really mis-sold an endowment to support a mortgage then their mortgage should be converted to a repayment type at the Insurance company's expense. Who really thinks that the recipients of the millions of compensation are using it to reduce their mortgages?

Crazy_Saver

Hi timbur.

Welcome to the boards.
Wow! what an opening thread. I agree whole heartedly with you, but no doubt the "contrary" replies will soon come flooding in. Virtually everything you have listed has happened so far in our mis-sold case. Unfortunately for us, the FOS adjudicator also appears to be slightly biased. Throughout the case, he was supposed to be keeping both parties fully informed of all correspondence/conversations, but he was only liasing with the "firm". He was discussing everything that we wrote with them but not informing us of the many untrue statements made by them in their defence.

I made numerous requests to the FOS to see copies of all correspondence but they made excuse after excuse. We eventually received the whole file only after all final submissions had been made and the case passed over to the ombudsman's waiting list!

It made incredible reading! The adjudicator and the firm had been trying to get an earlier time-bar re-instated even after it had been proven that we were within all the relevent time limits. Luckily for us, our endowment provider stepped in and was very honest by telling the FOS that we had never been given a claim date and we had only been sent one red alert letter. All this was going on without our knowledge.

The firm had also made many derogatory comments implying that we were stupid as well as querying our motives. They overlaid our signatures onto the advisors notes as well as backing up their recommendation to surrender two existing, well perfoming endowments (churning) by saying that we needed the surrender money - total fabrication!

The list goes on and on. We have now sent the FOS a second final submission letter in response to all the points raised by the firm in preparation for the case to go to an ombudsman.

As you say, it's not about the money any more, it's about being treated fairly and justly, as well as wanting answers.

I appreciate how hard it is for many of the IFA's on these boards to understand how we all "just believed" back in the 80s and 90s, and why we didn't question everything. Life was different then, we weren't the questioning society back then that we are today. There are no excuses today for not doing your homework but when we took out our existing endowment, we didn't have access to the internet or have the media coverage available today.

After all, if it weren't for this site, I probably would have considered using a claims firm to to fight our case. Yet more firms preying on the vulnerable. There will always be someone out there willing to take cash off of unwitting clients, but thank god there are also web sites like this with people like dunstonh, Mr Helpful, Vinno, Joek, EdInvestor, Defender of the Weak etc who are genuinely willing to help and advise.


Regards

Crazy Saver

timbur

Dear Crazy Saver,
Thanks for the comment. Best of luck with your complaint
Timbur