Act now on mis-sold endowments: new article

dunstonh

to say take it up with someone else, is this worth complaing about as the guy who sold the policy has died so where does that leave us?

Doesnt matter that he has died. He was a representative of HBOS and they take the responsibility. Only self employer/partnerships take personal financial liabilty for advice.

mayb_2

As you haven't had a projection letter warning you that this would not pay off your mortgage, ericabro, I don't see why you cannot put in a claim for a missale - you have not been time barred. Why not write to the Bank of Scotland using the template letter on the Which site or following the advice on the main forum here. Don't forget to send these recorded delivery too.

ericabro

Thankyou I will give it a try, Thanks for trying to help.

ericabro

Hi, My Husband has been on the phone today to HBOS and they have said its nothing to do with them and had him phoning Pheonix and and sun alliance and because we didnt cash the cheque it doesnt matter we should have done something in the last twelve months they wont do anything, what now? any help appreciated he is tearing his hair out!

mayb_2

I think a letter is much harder to brush off and will have to be replied to accurately. If you write the letter in the way sugested that you do on the Which site - copy this link into your web browser and scroll down to the letter generator -http://www.which.co.uk/reports_and_campaigns/money/campaigns/endowment_mortgages/index.jsp

This will require them to give you a written reply - if they are not the people to complain to make sure you write back and ask them to let you know who you should contact. Or if you think it is better send the letter to Sun Alliance/Phoenix. If you do not get a satisfactory response to these then you may be able to take this to the Ombudsman. The company should send you a copy of their complaints procedure and once you have exhausted that it should also tell you how to contact the Ombudsman service. Don't give in but be prepared to have to fight for your rights or at least get a proper explanation as to why they are claiming that you do not have a right to complain of a missale.

I am not sure whether it makes any difference if you cash the cheque or not somebody else will hopefully answer that one. If you do cash it make sure to pay it off your mortgage because it will reduce the amount of interest you are paying on that now.

anandp

dreamylittledream wrote: »

FSCS offers are much lower than those that come from major providers as they deduct the 'notional gain' from redress - i.e the amount the endowment was cheaper than a repayment mortgage.

Most selling agents are prohibited from doing this unless they can demonstrate you were
a) aware of the savings and
b) still have access to the funds saved (in a practical sense this is near impossible).

However the FSCS are a compensation scheme and thus are not bound by either by DISP or FOs guidance for mortgage endowment redress.

With regard to the DTA issue, if you were single with no dependants when the policy was taken and can prove that life cover was not a condition of lending (i.e you can get hold of a copy of the mortgage offer from your then lender), you have a shot at getting DTA excluded from the calculation.

You can also challenge this if you can prove you had sufficent life cover already in place to cover your mortgage (this must be a separate policy, not Death In Service cover mind).

But if you were married, had kids or were buying jointly, and didn't have any life cover, you have no chance of the life protection being removed from the calc.

The typical FSCS calculation is no loss in my experience, so £100 is better than nothing!

Thanks for the reply. It really does look as if I can't do anything as all of what you've said confirms what I've been told and what I've researched.

There is another avenue I am pursuing, which is connected. I took a further advance 10 years into my mortgage, and it got put down as a seperate sub-account, of the same mortgage.

I strongly believe a similar case exists for mis-selling here, but this time against the provider, not the agent (as the further advance was requested directly from Britannia). On these further advances, would Britannia have a responsibility to ensure I had adequate means to repay the additional funding?

Alison_Hay

Can anyone advise how I could reclaim if my Endowment Policy was sold by my solicitor?

ericabro

Hi, I have just recieved a letter back from HBOS saying that basically if I had taken out a repayment mortgage the shortfall would be the £72.?? that they have sent the cheque for, does this mean we have not got a case? As we have said earlier they projected that this would reach its target of £15.900. and there now saying £14.300 do you think we should accept this or is there something else we can do as we have already sent the endownment action letter from which. Thanks Erica

dunstonh

Can anyone advise how I could reclaim if my Endowment Policy was sold by my solicitor?

Erm, give up now? You have to complain to the solicitor. If they dont agree with you and you dont like the response then you can go to the law society for england/scotland. However, you need to be aware that the limits and protection you have is nowhere near what the FOS give you for financial advisers.

Hi, I have just recieved a letter back from HBOS saying that basically if I had taken out a repayment mortgage the shortfall would be the £72.?? that they have sent the cheque for, does this mean we have not got a case?

No. It means your complaint has been upheld and you are found to be £72 worse off at this moment in time.

As we have said earlier they projected that this would reach its target of £15.900. and there now saying £14.300 do you think we should accept this

It doesnt matter what the projections say. A projection at 6% doesnt mean the investments are performing at 6%. They could be doing 10% or they could be doing 3%. However, at this moment in time the decision to go with an endowment mortgage means you are £72 worse off. So, if you surrendered the endowment now and paid the £72 and surrender value into the mortgage and switched to repayment then you would be in the position that you said you wanted to be in with your complaint.

You cant haggle the figures if they use the standard mortgage fundamentals calculation.

It is worth noting that if the surrender penalty on your endowment is more thn £72 then in reality your endowment is currently in a surplus position. Many endowments were set up with 7% or 7.5% target growth rates. However, sample projections now tend to use 6% as mid rate. So a good endowment hitting target at 7.5% is likely to show a shortfall position at 6% even if its heading for surplus.

mayb_2

Hmmm I have a little issue here with this - if the letter says that your endowment will be short by x amount - that means that you are x amount short of paying off what a repayment mortgage would have paid off. So how can a redress be for less than that amount?? I thought that the parameters used for this was the difference between a repayment position and an endowment position. There must therefore, be a projection to determine the difference. What you are really saying here is that in fact redress does not determine the real position regarding a repayment mortgage it just says if you had paid x amount into a repayment mortgage you would be here now. There is a difference there and it would appear to be in the favour of the endowment company. Nothing new there then.

Don't forget that in this case the policy has matured so the final amount and the difference is known - or is it an imaginary elephant I am seeing in the room?