Act now on mis-sold endowments: new article

dunstonh

and his payout was a figure capable of paying the mortgage off in full if they cashed in the endowment.
They were recommended not to do this and to keep the endowment going,

Which is totally correct advice when given by a tied agent who is not allowed to recommend cancellation or surrender of a policy.

My question really is there any course of redress that they were ill advised by Lloyds, first in taking out the endowment, but after the second visit that they did not recommend for them to pay it off.

Dealing with second one first. No. Your parents will have no documents to say that advice was given and there will be no record of that meeting ever having taken place. Tied agents are rarely allowed to recommend cancellation of plans so the tied adviser was following their rules.

They could complain on the first one. Morally they shouldnt have a case as they would almost certainly have ended up in surplus on a 25 year unit linked plan started in 1983. They have also been better off financially with lower monthly payments on the mortgage due to most of the time endowments being cheaper than repayment mortgages, LAPR tax relief that was on the policy and MIRAS (and possible double MIRAS in the early days).

Of course, these things are not judged morally and your PIL can complain although the lower monthly costs will be taken into account and they may well find they end up with no redress payable. We dont have any way of calculating that here on the forums as we dont have the data.

Also, Lloyds back in 1983, were not operating an tied salesforce. Black Horse Life didnt come about until later. IIRC, they did have one with a bee for a logo which was later swallowed up. So, when they got advice from Lloyds later on, the adviser in the branch would almost certainly have been a representative of Black Horse Life (which was later rebranded to LloydsTSB life and then Scottish Widows). They wouldn't have the authorisation to discuss anything about the old plan as it wouldnt have been an old BHL policy.

I dont know what the status of the product sales were in 1983. I know there was a period where sales of products involved local arrangements, which usually meant an IFA or broker (which means no complaint can be made as its pre 1988). I dont know when that ended but it was before 1988 when I started.

mitchy66

We recently made a mis selling complaint about M&G who time barred us even though we never recieved any high risk or red letter. The FOS sided with M&G who said we should have had an indication that we had a shortfall from a letter they sent us in 2000.

Guess what we recieved in the post last Saturday - a projection letter from M&G underlined Red Letter!

I feel like the pee has been taken!

Crazy_Saver

We recently made a mis selling complaint about M&G who time barred us even though we never recieved any high risk or red letter.

Hi mitchy66

Can you prove that you never received any high risk or red alert letters?
If so, then surely you can challenge the time bar!

I did and our time bar was lifted;)

mitchy66

Hi Crazy Saver

We never did receive any letters that stated high risk or red letter, or we would have acted sooner, but sadly we can't prove it, and we are now out of time to appeal.

You lucky thing - how did you prove it?

Time barring is so unfair. We weren't given any notice that we had to complain by a certain time, and FOS said that companies did not have to say, so how are people supposed to know!

How many letters do these companies send out that actually say red letter on them?

I just think it strange and unfair that we got ours after the complaint went against us.

dunstonh

mitchy66 wrote:

Hi Crazy Saver

We never did receive any letters that stated high risk or red letter, or we would have acted sooner, but sadly we can't prove it, and we are now out of time to appeal.

You lucky thing - how did you prove it?

Time barring is so unfair. We weren't given any notice that we had to complain by a certain time, and FOS said that companies did not have to say, so how are people supposed to know!

How many letters do these companies send out that actually say red letter on them?

I just think it strange and unfair that we got ours after the complaint went against us.

Were you getting annual statements before? Most warnings were with the statement. Did you change address at any point and not notify the insurer?

aliavavodka

Having sold my endowment policy, i didn`t think it was posible to compain, till i looked on this site.
I wrote to my building society (halifax) complained about being miss sold my endowment in 1986 with clerical medical, and received a reply this morning.
I am pleased to advise you that i am upholding your complaint.It has been passed to thier redress team who will calculate as to whether you have suffered any financial loss.
Wonder how they do this?
As the policy was only for 22,000 and i sold it for 10,000 after paying into it for 15 years i`m not really expecting much, but it`s better in my pocket than the building society`s lol

Will let you know how i get on.

Thanks for a fab site!!

Ali xxx

Crazy_Saver

We never did receive any letters that stated high risk or red letter, or we would have acted sooner, but sadly we can't prove it, and we are now out of time to appeal.

You lucky thing - how did you prove it?

Hi mitchy66

We have all the statements up to this year which are obviously dated. The first one with the words Red Alert is dated July this year. We informed the advisor's company of this, also reminding them that FSA guidelines state that customers have 3 years from the date of their first Red Alert leter to make a claim, They then retracted the time bar.

If you have all your statements, you should be in luck. (Make sure you check the wording carefully).

Good Luck;)

mitchy66

Hi Dunstonh

We can't recall receiving annual statements (all our papers are together, and there are none there) apart from getting one in July this year which prompted us to ask if the policy will pay off the mortgage. We were told that we HAD received a letter in 2004 (we didn't) stating it wasn't on course and that we couldn't make a claim for mis selling as we were out of time, but we could go to the FOS.

Crazy Saver

We have looked through our papers and there are no other statements, and we have kept everything, the only letter that was marked red was the one we received last weekend.

I know we should have realised sooner, so that's a lesson learned, but I suppose our only hope now is that one day the rules change about time bars.

Thank you both for your time

mookybargirl

My MIL was just settled.

About 3-4 months ago, she was telling me about her mortgage and how it had fell short as she was about to retire. I had never even thought to mention about endownment problems and that she could claim as her house was only about 25k when she bought it, and I assumed that it had been paid off long before now. Anyway, at first she was told she was too late to claim but I insisted that she persist with it. She did and she had to make a few calls and fill in some forms. As I said, in the end she got some money back, not huge amounts but something at least.

She did receive notifications but ignored them. She rang them once a few years back and was told by the person on the phone "I'm in the same boat, nothing we can do about it".

It will do no harm to keep trying if at first you don't succeed.

Crazy_Saver

Originally posted by mitchy66
We were told that we HAD received a letter in 2004 (we didn't) stating it wasn't on course and that we couldn't make a claim for mis selling as we were out of time, but we could go to the FOS.

Hi mitchy66

If what they are telling you is true, then you still have a year left to claim.

We have looked through our papers and there are no other statements, and we have kept everything, the only letter that was marked red was the one we received last weekend.

Why don't you write and tell them that you have documentary proof that your first red letter is dated October 2006. You have nothing to lose and plenty to gain if your time bar is lifted.

Surely it's worth a try, don't give up hope!

Crazy Saver