Act now on mis-sold endowments: new article

dunstonh

oldrocks wrote: »

is it too late to put in a claim if we have paid off our mortgage but are still paying off the endowment til 2011?

No. Although if you paid the mortgage off before 2001 then its probable that you were not in a loss position.

The majority of endowments are now time barred so check your statements to see if that applies to you. About 1 in 4 are still not time barred though.

vinno65

nicky92 wrote: »

Thanks for your prompt replies..the main reason we complained in the first place was because we were told if we paid an extra £10 per month we would be able to pay our mortage off in 17yrs instead of 25 and so that is what we have been doing but now it still says after 25yrs there will not be enough and That is with us paying this extra £10.....but thanks for your advice i will look at switching to a repayment

Hi Nicky,
just one point. Make sure the redress they are paying you is based on a 17 year mortgage not a 25 year one. If you were told that the endowment would pay off the mortgage after 17 years then your redress should be based on you having had a 17 year repayment mortgage. This could make a significant difference as if you had had a 17 year repayment you would only have 5 years left.

I was in a similar position in that I was told my endowment would pay out after 22 years however redress was calculated on the basis of a 25 year repayment the difference in redress between the two was about £1500 pounds.

Regards Vinno

vinno65

dunstonh wrote: »

I follow you now. It wasnt the projection but the fact you waited a year and its matured lower than last years value (no surprise seeing as the markets dropped upto 20% in that period, although recovered 10% of it recently)..

Hi Dunston,
Can't get my head around this one. Even with the lack of any sort of terminal bonus( I don't know if one was issued in this case) Surely the value of the endowment must have increased by at least the amount of a years premiums less any charges. I can't understand how it could have devalued by £1500.

Can you explain?

Genuinely confused

Vinno

vinno65

Chamois wrote: »

Thanks for all of your advice! £15k was the worst case scenario and since we only took out our 25-year policy in 1999, it will be a while before we find out what will actually happen. To be on the safe side we have converted part of our mortgage to repayment and also made regular overpayments.

To be honest, we were pretty much against taking out an endowment in the first place since we had heard some negative press about them but we allowed ourselves to be persuaded to do so. This was our first mortgage and we were rather naive I'm afraid - something which I'm now hoping to rectify with the aid of this very useful site.

Thanks again!

If you are no worse off now and you were pretty much against taking out an endowment why not scrap it? You can use the surrender to pay a lump off the mortgage and if you so wish use the saved premiums to overpay. Replacement life cover is quite cheap these days and you would have the peace of mind of knowing that so long as to kept up your payments the mortgage would be paid off.

Regards Vinno

vinno65

Wistful100 wrote: »

We still have all the projections of growth etc. for our current endowments & definitely knew that we were never told by the sales person that it might actually not perform to our required minimum. I know that categorically.................how? Because in one case I was that salesperson when I was working for Sun Alliance & it was never mentioned even in training!! :eek:

I find that very hard to believe. This sort of thing just didn't happen.
Should have read the small print blah blah blah
Hey Mr Helpful?

Regards Vinno

dunstonh

vinno65 wrote: »

Hi Dunston,
Can't get my head around this one. Even with the lack of any sort of terminal bonus( I don't know if one was issued in this case) Surely the value of the endowment must have increased by at least the amount of a years premiums less any charges. I can't understand how it could have devalued by £1500.

Can you explain?

Genuinely confused

Vinno

This one was unit linked. There is no capital security of any sort on unit linked endowments so the value will fluctuate in line with the value of the investments in the fund.

AbbieCadabra

i have to admit that i'm another that has been a bit blinkered on this subject , but i have finally got around to my complaint letter today (as per the Which site).

£24,500 endowment in 1991 & we re-mortaged in 1998 - we kept the original endowment part & the 'new' bit was on a repayment basis to coincide with the end date of the endowment, due 2016.

we took out a fixed rate deal a few years ago & increased the amount on repayment by £7,000 as we'd had letters about the shortfall on the endowment.

i can't find any current info for the adviser that sold us the endowment, he was getting on in years, so just assumed we wouldn't be able to do anything...

we were very niave about financial 'stuff' back then & just took his friendly word for it that the mortgage would be paid AND we'd have something extra at the end too :rolleyes:

oh well, it's at least worth a letter to get the ball rolling - they can only say NO can't they!

dunstonh

oh well, it's at least worth a letter to get the ball rolling - they can only say NO can't they!

They could say no or they could say yes. Even if they say yes you may not get anything. 98.2% of Scot Am endowments are paying a surplus this year and their lowest point about 3 or 4 years ago fell to 94% success rate.

You could be complaining about an endowment that is on track for surplus and saving you money each month compared to a repayment mortgage.

vinno65

dunstonh wrote: »

This one was unit linked. There is no capital security of any sort on unit linked endowments so the value will fluctuate in line with the value of the investments in the fund.

Thanks Dunston

Regards Vinno

mayb_2

I have not visited the site for a while and am just catching up on some of the posts.
As I understand it dunstonh you are saying that the information given at the point of sale regarding performance bears no relation to the product or its likely future as an investment. I would read that as meaning every single sale is a missale then, as the person buying it has no information to go on at all. So if they are sold it without being told - actually this could be a load of rubbish or a real gem and there is absolutely no way of knowing whether it will perform well or poorly - then they have been mislead and the product should never, ever be considered as a mortgage repayment vehicle to anyone not already heavily involved in these sorts of funds and totally in the loop.

Just as well they brought that good old time bar rule in or who knows where this may have ended for those poor beleagured finance companies.