Act now on mis-sold endowments: new article

treliac

Thanks everyone. It's good to feel the support of people going through the same difficulties. Reading the stories of of mayb (do hope you get fit again mayb) and Crazy Saver helped get me started on this road in the first place ....


dunstonh's always here to keep our feet on the ground


There's probably going to be a lull with our case now (a long one ...?) but I'll keep everyone posted when we get there, keep in touch with what's happening on here, stick my oar in sometimes and get indignantly carried away from time to time, no doubt.


I may even venture onto some other boards.


treliac

mayb_2

dunstonh you will not be suprised to hear me say that when reading this article I was apalled at the blatant use of time barring, an instrument of the FSA - to reduce the number of sucessful claims being made and harming the poor hard done by financial services industry they were established to protect, to throw out 25% of cases. That is a quarter of all complaints dunstonh - which, considering the number being put forward at the moment, translates into a lot of people being cheated out of even the chance of redress. Then there are all of those who were unlucky enough to chose one of the worst third party companies and had their complaint thrown out because it was poorly presented. These are hardly likely to be the liars and cheats you have referred to in the past, because we have to assume they are a lot cleverer than that and would not have been caught out by the time bar or a dodgy company.

As I have said before, this would not happen in any other area and as the only people likely to object to such a rule are the poor ones in this equation, they have no voice at all. Third party complaint firms are not all bad and many people would rather share some of their redress with a third party than not receive it at all as they were not up to the task of doing this themselves.

I see from this that it is considered to be some sort of war with the winners and losers being third party complaint companies and those who sold the policies in the first place. Whereas the winners are usually the finance industry who have such big guns as the FSA and government to help them out (with tax payers money in the case of Northern Rock) and the ordinary man in the street with no money, and even less money when the dodgy system allows finance companies to get away with not paying them their due.

dunstonh

dunstonh you will not be suprised to hear me say that when reading this article I was apalled at the blatant use of time barring, an instrument of the FSA - to reduce the number of sucessful claims being made and harming the poor hard done by financial services industry they were established to protect, to throw out 25% of cases.

I am almost certain the time bar wouldnt have existed had a number of claims companies not been so pro-active in encouarging complaints to get free money. You just have to look at the comments about EMC to see the sort of thing the complaints handlers have to put up with.

Then there are all of those who were unlucky enough to chose one of the worst third party companies and had their complaint thrown out because it was poorly presented. These are hardly likely to be the liars and cheats you have referred to in the past, because we have to assume they are a lot cleverer than that and would not have been caught out by the time bar or a dodgy company.

The documentation refers to the client file not the claims company. Remember that having an endowment is not a mis-sale. It is how it was sold or documented that could be and a good documented file will almost always result in a rejected claim. I have mentioned before that out of a 1000 complaints, 25 are genuine upheld complants but another 225 result in redress because the client file is missing documents or not well documented. The other 750 are rejected.

Third party complaint firms are not all bad and many people would rather share some of their redress with a third party than not receive it at all as they were not up to the task of doing this themselves.

No they are not but this and the pensions forum have highlighted a few examples of bad ones recently and it is interesting that the compliance bulletin also mentions one of the worst there is.

Just like my profession having its bad apples, the claims company side does too.

defender_of_the_weak

Just one small correction.

The use of the time bar was introduced by the financial services companies from the outset, it had nothing to do with the volume of claims from third party companies. In the early days all sorts of reasons were supposedly given to time bar complaints, even down to one major bank stating that a 1991 complaint was time barred because they had sold the policyholder another plan in 1996.

One of the major unspoken scandals within this is the idea from most of the major building societies that they gave no advice at all before 1988 and merely let the customer make an 'informed choice' from some product literature they supplied at the time. I have no idea of the overall numbers but there must thousands of genuine complainants who have given up at this first rejection letter.

It is quite laughable that once this whole episode kicked off the industry brought in all the bright minds from KPMG, Deloittes etc to work out ways of getting rid of the problem and once an individual attempts to use the services of a professional to represent them (I wont do the good bad claim company discussion) they all cry foul.

mayb_2

As you already are aware dunstonh, I did not even know any such thing as a fact find had been completed on our purchase and the paperwork was not in order and did contain some blatant lies. We didn't see it, sign it, or know of its existance. You start from the premis that the paperwork can stand up for itself and results in justifiably rejected claims and I would argue with that premis. I asked for my paperwork to be sent to me - does every claimant do that I wonder? I think it may be a case of the company sending the paperwork to the Ombudsman when asked and the complainant does not automatically get a copy. I also asked for the paperwork supplied by the company to the Ombudsman and that revealed another raft of suprises. The largest suprise was that the Ombudsman arrived at his decision in spite of the Company's own admitance of failures and in the face of the evidence not because of it. I just have this niggly little feeling that I am not alone here.

defender_of_the_weak

Mayb, I am afraid that to a certain extent we all have to accept that Ombudspeople are human and can make mistakes, I have obviously seen many examples of this and despite raisng it in the trade press, FOS have never owned up to the level of qualification of their staff. Before ever getting involved with FOS I had sort of assumed that the adjudicators and Ombudsmen were at least as well qualified as those whose work they judge in the form of financial advice, but I am afraid that it is not true, thats why we end up with unsatisfactory decisions like yours.

Oh, and some advisers lie and make up paperwork, but then some customers do too

treliac

I asked for my paperwork to be sent to me - does every claimant do that I wonder? I think it may be a case of the company sending the paperwork to the Ombudsman when asked and the complainant does not automatically get a copy.

I've been told the company can be asked to supply a copy of their file and shouldn't charge more than £10 for it.

treliac

dunstonh wrote: »

I am almost certain the time bar wouldnt have existed had a number of claims companies not been so pro-active in encouarging complaints to get free money. You just have to look at the comments about EMC to see the sort of thing the complaints handlers have to put up with.

Why should a person's claim essentially be any less valid because they have gone through a claims company? Sure, some may have been encouraged to jump on the bandwagon. But this should not disadvantage those that are genuine and that is what 'judges' (in the loosest term) are employed to weigh up and make responsible judgement on.

People will have gone to claims companies because they do not feel strong enough, competent enough or have verbal or written abilities that would enable them to represent themselves.

treliac

Everyone can make a mistake but the level of this, as it’s being described, appears more of an institutional and discriminatory bias towards the financial industry. The FOS should surely exist to give expert and impartial judgement in cases that involve huge sums of money / a lifetime of financial disadvantage for individuals who are inexperienced and untrained in commercial finance. The FOS is failing if they do not do this and do not employ staff who have the experience, training and maturity to make sound and balanced judgement.

Of course, all parties can lie but there seems a major issue with the ‘balance of probabilities’ and an easy acceptance of spurious arguments that is not being addressed here.

What can people do if they have gone to the Ombudsman and know that an unfair and illogical argument against them has been accepted? This is not justice and should not have to be accepted.

dreamylittledream

Interesting that EMC are now the largest third party claims firm against your network dunstoh. That situation has certainly changed from a year ago.

From a vetting point of view, there's little point in a claims firm progressing a case to FOS if there is no case to answer - a business case needs to exist after all. As a matter of course therefore you would expect firms to be enclosing the full file and of course any red letters (without the evidence of which which a timebar is not valid let us not forget).

Whilst one can't comment on different practices between firms, I suspect many FOS fees may not have been paid if firms had enclosed evidence to support their rejections.