Act now on mis-sold endowments: new article

mayb_2

Originally Posted by dunstonh

Not unless you have it in writing that you will get £10,000.

It was never going to make £10,000. It would have only made 10k if the whole £5200 you paid in was invested on the first day. I think you would be lucky gettting £5600 on a 1996 plan.

This makes me so mad - if it was nver going to make £10,000 why was it ok for the sales people to make such a claim and why can they be safe in the knowledge that no one will ever hold them accountable for doing so?????

ayrbear 1 The company who holds your endowment policy should be able to give you a cash in value for now and a projected terminal figure (ask them if they are planning to pay a terminal bonus) and that will perhaps show you whether it is going to add more to its value than the amount you are paying in. From that you can decide whether to continue or not.

mayb_2

Now there's a catchpenny Lindyloo. Does it say anywhere that the date they take is the date the advice was given?

Surely it must be the date you actually took out the endowment that counts? If the valididty of the advice had changed by then did the company not have a duty to tell you so. If they allowed you to take out the endowment on that date then they have advised you on that date that their advice remained the same. What a meally mouthed response to your claim. It just shows how desperate they are all getting at the number of missales they are having to deal with. £40,000 is a fortune to find - that cannot be right. If you get no compensation what are you supposed to do about that shortfall - did they have a suggestion for that.

I would be really interested to hear the response of the financial wizz kids on this one. Hopefully it is just some jobsworth and an appeal will get a different response. Can you go to the Ombudsman on this. (not that I have much faith in that particular place - as far as I can see they make the rules up as they go along too).

defender_of_the_weak

I'm afraid the jobsworth is right on this one. It is not always clear from fscs literature but the key date is the date of advice not the date the policy commenced. FOS have no remit to intervene

vinno65

mayb wrote:

Can anyone tell me if the time bar thing is actually lawful in itself. If a case did come to court would the FSA stating there was a time bar be enough to throw out a claim for instance. Why should these companies be able to claim a time bar against the consumer? There appear to be rules that apply to the consumer that the FSA can enforce but when the companies break the rules the outcomes are much less sure. How can you prove a negative - if you didn't get a red letter how can you prove it, if the company claims you did?

The timebar as applied by the fsa/fos is a complete joke. Technically my complaint was timebarred from the FOS by the reprojection letter sent to me in 2000 by Friends Provident. This still stands. When I took FP to court they tried to have my case thrown out under the Limitations Act on the basis of this same letter. I took them to court in 2005 and so they said time has run out in 2003 because of the 2000 letter. I argued that this letter was exactly what it was, a reprojection letter. It made no mention that I had been miss-sold and had no indication of how much I was out of pocket, the two things you need to make a claim in court. The Judge agreed with me.

Since the case FP have said that they will now be relying on the much more strongly worded letters sent out in 2003. This is b****cks. I got one of these aswell. Its exactly the same as the 2000 letter except that they dropped the wonderful advice to "wait and see".

I was recently contacted by a chap sueing FP and he told me that they are now using the 15 year long stop as their initial defence. This is a bit rich seeing as how the chap had followed all the advice and complained to the FOS and after a 3 year battle had his complaint with them time barred and now it seems that the time he has taken with the FOS has taken his complaint past the 15 years he has to take a claim to court.

There are certain caveats in the Limitations Act and he could argue against the 15 year rule, possibly on the basis that the sale was fraudulent or even sold by mistake in which case the time bar could be lifted however he is being threatened with costs etc by FP so I am not sure if he has the stomach for the fight.

Finally on FOS timebars here's one for the experts,why did so called red letters start the clock ticking but amber ones didn't? They both contain the same information.
Something the FOS/FSA has still not explained.
Regards Vinno

vinno65

dunstonh wrote:

http://www.ifadu.co.uk/downloads/Endowments-AH.pdf

Take a read of that article if you have a Pru/Scot Am endowment.

As you like to keep pointing out Dunston there are two sideds to every story!
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages/endowments/article.html?in_article_id=417463&in_page_id=55

regards Vinno

Lewie

Hi all.
I used the no win no fee way.
I had a response which said that although the lender agrees with everything i say and that i was missold my endowment they say that if i change my mortgage now to a repayment, in the long term i will lose nothing and so i am not entitled to compensation.
Can they do this, mislead people, put them in a position of worry and then get away without paying a penny by telling ME to put it right??
Thanks for any info.

Lindyloo_2

Thanks for your replies. I was hoping that the advice being just before the cut off date was not the important thing which would be the actual date of the start of the policy, but after reading the last comment that this decision is correct am downhearted.

I just assumed that because it was the FSCS what they told me would be correct.

Is there any point me trying to take this further. Obviously with such a shortfall I feel very agrieved. I would fight to the death if I was in the right but would find it hard if I was not. I have wondered if it would be worth trying a agent to look into it but again thought that as the FSCS ruled the advice was too early they would not even touch it. Any thoughts anyone?

dunstonh

Can they do this, mislead people, put them in a position of worry and then get away without paying a penny by telling ME to put it right??

You are not financially worse of by using an endowment. So, you are not entitled to anything. Not all endowments are bad and the last 3-4 years have seen unit linked endowment in particular jump up in value and many are getting back on track.

This doenst mean it is still the right option for you going forward so you should get the endowment reviewed but it does mean you are not financially worse at this point.

Lewie

Thanks for the reply dunstonh.
It's the fact that they kept sending me letters telling me that my endowment was going to shortfall and that i needed to up my payments. Then they tell me to change mortgage to rectify the problem.
It seems unfair that i should spend my time sorting out the problem when it is they that caused it, by their own admittance.
I may not lose anything on the endowment, many more years will have to pass before i know, but, i will lose if i have to take time off to sort a new mortgage.
They appear to be getting off scott free after using underhand tactics to sell me their product.
I suppose i would have to go down a different route to get recompense for any losses not conected witht the endowment.

dunstonh

It's the fact that they kept sending me letters telling me that my endowment was going to shortfall and that i needed to up my payments. Then they tell me to change mortgage to rectify the problem.

Projections can be notoriously unreliable when used as the single source of information.

For example, for the last 3 years many unit linked funds have been performing at figures in excess of 10% a year. Yet the projections may only be using 6%. Conventional with profits plans often dont include any terminal bonus in the projections so the value of the plan as it currently stands isnt being used to project from.

Also, endowment mortgages tend to cost less each month when compared to a repayment mortgage.

Many endowments have gone on to provide a surplus despite getting warnings of shortfall. Indeed, there are examples of some giving shortfall warnings as little as 3 months before maturity. Yet the maturity has gone on to provide surplus.

The warning system is designed to use the projections but the projections could be understating the performance. With poor quality endowments, they could also be overstating the performance.

It seems unfair that i should spend my time sorting out the problem when it is they that caused it, by their own admittance.
I may not lose anything on the endowment, many more years will have to pass before i know, but, i will lose if i have to take time off to sort a new mortgage.

They are saying that you shouldnt have been sold this option but actually you are better off at this point in time if you were to surrender the endowment and switch to a repayment mortgage. To do that takes about 10-15 minutes work. If you wanted to be fair, you could ask them to pay the switching cost to repayment but if you really wanted to be fair, you ought to give them back the surplus you are currently better off by