Act now on mis-sold endowments: new article

big-g_9

My endowment was taken out in Sept '90 with a promise of paying my mortgage, plus a cash lump sum as well. When I first received notice of a shortfall I wrote and explained that I considered I had been mis sold and got turned down flat.Then all the advice started to become available so I contacted a firm to do the claim for me, (before I found this site) only to be told after 3 months that as I had already been refused, then there was nothing further to be done. So now my endowment will pay approx £15,000 less than original mortgage amount. Is that the end of any hope?
Fortunately it is no longer assigned to a property but even so I have lost out on my savings. Not all claims have happy endings :mad:

dunstonh

Then all the advice started to become available so I contacted a firm to do the claim for me, (before I found this site) only to be told after 3 months that as I had already been refused, then there was nothing further to be done.

You cannot repeat a complaint as a second chance. If you dont like the outcome, you take it to the FOS.

So now my endowment will pay approx £15,000 less than original mortgage amount. Is that the end of any hope?

How do you know that your endowment will pay out approx £15k less. Projection figures are proving to be inaccurate and tending to err on the lower side by using surrender values to project from (mostly on conventional with profits plans) rather than a real current value. This can knock thousands off the projection. Equally, some are in a worse position and it could be higher than 15k. I cannot recall how many times I have seen endowments show shortfalls on the projections but go on to provide surplus. Have you done a proper analysis on the likely shortfall/surplus figure?

Hugh_Shortfall

Jorayner wrote:

Hugh Shortfall, I am in a simialr position with Standard Life. My IFA was not registed with the FSA when I bought in Oct 88. and does not seem to exist now.

The FSA advised me that Standard Life had a duty to make sure that people selling their products were regulated.

I am pursuing Standard Life at the moment. The FSA said if this is not successful to take Standard Life to the Ombudman for failing in their duty to check my IFA was regulated.

Well I found out the IFA who sold me my Standard Life policy sat in a branch of the Halifax back in 1989 was indeed regulated , by the Institute Of Chartered Accountants. As neither Standard Life nor the FSCS will look at my case, I'm now drinking in the last chance saloon in the complaints dept of the Institute Of Chartered Accountants. The IFA who sold me this policy has long since folded and I'm hoping the ICA will compensate me for his wrong doings, though I did hear unlike the FSA the ICA will not deal with cases where the IFA is no longer trading, in which case I'm up the proverbial.

In 1989 I was a single man, no dependants and thought that by buying a mortgage from my local Halifax branch I was doing the right thing, I wasn't informed of any risks and was assured that my mortgage would be paid off. I'm now looking at a £14K + shortfall. Strange how the Halifax themselves take no responsibilty for what goes on in their branches, scandalous really.

dunstonh

The IFA who sold me this policy has long since folded and I'm hoping the ICA will compensate me for his wrong doings, though I did hear unlike the FSA the ICA will not deal with cases where the IFA is no longer trading, in which case I'm up the proverbial.

IIRC, there is no equivalent to the FSCS for accountants who used to give advice. If so, that would mean there is no-one to pay any redress even if you were genuinely mis-sold.

Stumpy

We've had two endowments that we have complained about - one was sold for our first house in 1989 and, unfortunately, the company that sold it no longer exists. We've sent a letter to the FSCS and (hopefully) are in the process of getting some sort of agent reference number as they couldn't trace the agents - it was a Scottish Provident endowment, but sold through an "agent" - black horse agencies (and what a joke they turned out to be). I rang Scottish Provident up but they're apparently having some computer problems and couldn't find it while I was on the phone, however, promised to send me a letter with it on.

Anyway, the other was one sold by Guardian - we sent them a letter of complaint ages and ages ago, and eventually got a letter back saying that we weren't due any compensation. We just shrugged our shoulders and decided it had been worth a try - resigned to having to get some sort of loan or something at the end of the term to finish paying off the mortgage.

However - a few months ago we got another letter from them asking for more details and RESULT - they've offered us £2,300 compensation. We're probably going to stick that in an ISA or something for a while, but I've noticed that others have mentioned cashing in their endowment policies as well - should we or shouldn't we?

We've got 3 endowments in total - the first one (1989) was only a very small one - maybe £15k ish, the second one was a bit larger at about £30k and the last was about £40k. What we did was, whenever we changed house, we kept the length of the mortgage roughly the same rather than making it another 25 years each time, and just added an extra endowment on top. With the last one, I'm not sure of the exact details, but I believe we did a bit of jiggery-pokery last time we remortgaged so that it's now split between the original endowments, plus a bit of repayment to cover the (then) shortfall. I'm of the opinion that it's easier to just leave it all alone - it's confusing enough as it is!! Any other opinions?! :rolleyes:

Edit: Just rung Scottish Provident again to chase up this reference number they couldn't get me before - their computer system is down again!! Sheesh.

Edit (again!): I've rung Scottish Provident again - apparently they don't have the SIB number. They're sending me a copy of some paperwork with the agents name and address on it, but we've already passed that onto FSCS previously who said it wasn't enough to track them down. Is that it? Is there any other way of tracking them?

lostnfound

Hubby was sold an endowment policy in 1991 while he was in the army ,which is now not going to meet its target,this policy was sold to him at a time when he wasnt going to buy a house in fact we didnt buy one till 9 years later, the company was scottish amicable now known as scottish prudential i think,when we told the company we thought we had been missold this policy they told us that the agent was working on his own not part of scottish amicable company.Can u tell us where we stand on this matter.thanks .

DiveLeader_2

I finally got round to claiming for misselling on my 3 endowments. Unfortunately 1 was taken out before 1988 so there's little I can do. Of the other 2, one was sold by an IFA who has ceased trading and is in default, so I have to pursue that through the FSCS.

The other one is with the HSBC. We have had out claim for misselling on that one accepted :T -the big downside is that we got offered the grand total of £190. Turns out when we followed their advice to increase the payments to cover the shortfall we lost out - both on forking out big premiums and not on the amount of compensation (based on our current financial situation)

We are thinking of surrendering the policy and investing the money elsewhere, so I thought about trading the enowment, but it turns out no one wants HSBC policies (I wonder why).

jazper

I realise that this is probably too late, but I would be interested to know how we stood. Back in 86 we moved house and mortgage. We already had an endowment with (now) Winterthur Life and needed a top-up. The Halifax refused to sell a top-up endowment from Winterthur Life and insisted on us using their sole recommendation Equity&Life. It turned out the Winterthur Life performed just OK, but Equity&Life was hopeless.
I always knew that endowments were not guaranteed but I am annoyed that we were forced to use an inferior insurance company. Would this be classed as "miss-selling"?

dunstonh

jazper wrote:

I realise that this is probably too late, but I would be interested to know how we stood. Back in 86 we moved house and mortgage. We already had an endowment with (now) Winterthur Life and needed a top-up. The Halifax refused to sell a top-up endowment from Winterthur Life and insisted on us using their sole recommendation Equity&Life. It turned out the Winterthur Life performed just OK, but Equity&Life was hopeless.
I always knew that endowments were not guaranteed but I am annoyed that we were forced to use an inferior insurance company. Would this be classed as "miss-selling"?

Almost certainly would be by todays standards but 1986 is pre-regulation and if the person doing it wasnt a Halifax employee (likely in 1986), then you have no consumer protection. That didnt come in until 1988 for most advice firms.

tony006

Hi I have just received a letter back from TSB stating that there is a timebar on complaints and that they will not be looking into my complaint any further? Yes I have received letters with projected shortfall (high risk) but didn't realise I could claim until someone from work told me its not about receiving the letters or taking out a repayment morgage (but I kept the enownments going) its all about being missold the policy in the first instant?
also in the letter they said it would be a waste of time for me to contact the obudsman because they would look at the timebar and uphold their decision?

any advice on what I can do from here? Many thanks in advance:o
Sorry policy taken out in 1989