Act now on mis-sold endowments: new article

Cazza57

Hi,
I have just got an offer of just over 4K for my Halifax home plan which i took out in 1996. I got a red alert letter last year and another one a couple of weeks ago saying that i had until Oct 12th to complain. I phoned Halifax directly with my complaint as i have no paperwork at all and they have still decided to offer me compensation. Just thought it would be worth making people aware of this as I thought i had no chance as i could not prove what had been said to me. Obviously, this will not be enough to make up the shortfall but i do think that Halifax's customer service has been outstanding.

dunstonh

Obviously, this will not be enough to make up the shortfall but i do think that Halifax's customer service has been outstanding.

If you put the £4000 into the mortgage and switch to repayment basis then you will be exactly in the position you would have been had you been on repayment mortgage. As the redress is less than an example projected shortfall then it suggests it is not as far off as the projections may be indicating.

magpiecottage

arcweld wrote: »

Thanks for your informative reply,

I pay £38.00 per month into the ISA plan, the statement shows 'income earned from the shares, including equalisation 02/07/2011 - 01/01/2012 £57.27'.

£38 a month for 20 years would need a return, after all charges, of 5.17% per annum compound to achieve £16,000.

At that rate, it would now be worth £8,460.

Reaching £6,900 now represents a return of just over 2.5%.

However, investment performance is grounds for complaint and for almost half the time you have been investing we have been in a recession.

magpiecottage

Cazza57 wrote: »

I phoned Halifax directly with my complaint as i have no paperwork at all and they have still decided to offer me compensation.

Sounds like they don't have any paperwork either.

1996 endowment sales were generally well documented and had clear warnings of a possible shortfall.

Unless that documentation was lost, such sales are generally able to be defended.

RedorBlack

Hi am a newbie to this forum and just wondered if anyone would be able to offer some advice please...

My husband took out a Flexible Endowement Plan Mortgage in July 1999, his first ever mortgage! He's just recently found some paperworks which shows there's PPI in addition to the mortgage payment. He says he didn't realise he had paid PPI. He's also found paperworks with the Red Lettering which states that the plan was not 'on track' to repay the mortgage...of course, he just ignored the letters and got on with his daily stuff! It was only until recently that I was reading on this great site that I realised he may have been able to reclaim on the PPI.

Please advise if 1. Does he have a case for mis sold PPI and 2. Is he still within the time frame to make a complaint about the Endowement being sold to him, which at the time, he did not fully understood the full extent of taking an endowement mortgage?

Many thanks in advance for your help.

dunstonh

RedorBlack wrote: »

Hi am a newbie to this forum and just wondered if anyone would be able to offer some advice please...

My husband took out a Flexible Endowement Plan Mortgage in July 1999, his first ever mortgage! He's just recently found some paperworks which shows there's PPI in addition to the mortgage payment. He says he didn't realise he had paid PPI. He's also found paperworks with the Red Lettering which states that the plan was not 'on track' to repay the mortgage...of course, he just ignored the letters and got on with his daily stuff! It was only until recently that I was reading on this great site that I realised he may have been able to reclaim on the PPI.

Please advise if 1. Does he have a case for mis sold PPI and 2. Is he still within the time frame to make a complaint about the Endowement being sold to him, which at the time, he did not fully understood the full extent of taking an endowement mortgage?

Many thanks in advance for your help.

This thread is about endowments. Your issue seems to be about PPI as well. As endowments cant have PPI on them, I suggest you post your message on a different thread in the PPI section. Although I will cover some of the points.

He took the mortgage out in 1999. MPPI is a monthly payment. So, for the last 13 years, he has had a monthly payment go out that he didnt know about. That doesnt sound very credible. Complaining after a month or two about an unauthorised payment is credible. Even if the evidence shows no wrong doing. Complaining after 150 months is not very credible. The evidence will show a signed application form, an illustration issued (both by the seller and a copy sent in the post by the insurer along with the cancellation rights and a policy schedule issued). So, evidence is against him.

He's also found paperworks with the Red Lettering which states that the plan was not 'on track' to repay the mortgage...of course, he just ignored the letters and got on with his daily stuff! It was only until recently that I was reading on this great site that I realised he may have been able to reclaim on the PPI.

Red alerts have nothing to do with PPI.

1. Does he have a case for mis sold PPI

You have given no indication of mis-selling.

2. Is he still within the time frame to make a complaint about the Endowement being sold to him, which at the time, he did not fully understood the full extent of taking an endowement mortgage?

He gets 3 years from first being notified of a high risk of shortfall. Most endowments are now timebarred due to that 3 year period having come and gone. However, he can contact the insurer to ask.

magpiecottage

At some point one of the red letters will almost certainly have given him a deadline by which to complain about the endowment.

If he has missed it then it will now be too late.

However, there are some endowments from 1999 that ARE still inside the time limit. I dealt with one earlier this year.

That said, by 1999, most advisers were far more on the ball and so I was able to reject the complaint. The complainant went to FOS and an adjudicator also rejected it. The complainant has now asked an Ombudsman to consider it and we do not know how that will turn out but of the cases currently at FOS, I am most confident about this one.

lawson.mayor

Hi,

i was sold an endowment policy in 1997 to cover a 76K mortgage, the policy was with the Norwich union.

in 2003 i sold the house, i realised the policy was useless to me and at that point i managed to get a repayment mortgage, i did not complain then as i didnt realise i could, so i cashed it it and went on holiday!

does anyone know if it is worth trying to claim now?

DevCoder

No, I dont believe you can claim anything now. The endowment policy could have been kept for a future return, it didnt need to be surrendered just because you sold the house.

dunstonh

lawson.mayor wrote: »

Hi,

i was sold an endowment policy in 1997 to cover a 76K mortgage, the policy was with the Norwich union.

in 2003 i sold the house, i realised the policy was useless to me and at that point i managed to get a repayment mortgage, i did not complain then as i didnt realise i could, so i cashed it it and went on holiday!

does anyone know if it is worth trying to claim now?

You get 6 years from date of sale or 3 years from being reasonably aware of a problem to make a complaint or a firm can time bar you.

In 2003 you got rid of it. So, 3 years from that date is 2006. So, a firm could apply the timebar to your complaint.

Ironically, a 1997 sale of a unit linked endowment could end up being very good value for money over the long term given events of the last decade.