Norwich Union endowments advice please

Jitter

Firstly I would like to say I have learnt a huge amount browsing these forums, I considered myself to be reasonably financially astute but now realise I know virtually nothing about the workings of endowments.

I have two endowments with Norwich Union, these were taken out to pay off the mortgage (56K) and provide life insurance. The life insurance element is no longer needed and I have approximately 30K left to pay on the mortgage which is currently fixed at 5.69% until March 2010.

I have been asking NU for information on the policies since early January and it has finally arrived today;

1. Guaranteed minimum cost endowment invested in ConvOB Compound Series Conventional fund
Commencement date 13/03/1991, maturity date 13/03/2016
Monthly premium £51.60
Sum assured £13,760/Guaranteed death benefit £40,000
Current fund value £4822.14
Surrender value £13,811.09
Maturity forecasts 4% £21,600, 6% £23,000, 8% £24,500

2. Flexible mortgage plus invested in with profits standard fund.
Commencement date 03/04/1998, maturity date 03/04/2018
Monthly premium £38.27
Sum assured £16,000
Current fund value £4609.41
Surrender value £4265.19
Maturity forecasts 4% £10,600, 6% £11,400, 8% £12,200

I have over 30K in a cash ISA currently paying 4.5% (with a bonus of 2% that ends in November) that I could alternatively use to pay off the mortgage.

I would be grateful if anyone has any thoughts on the following;

Do the above figures make sense? Particularly the current fund value of the first policy, after several telephone conversations with them I dont have that much confidence in what they have told me.
Could/should NU have provided me with figures on declared bonuses as I requested?
Why has the first policy underperforming proportionally much worse than the second and is forecast to continue to do so?
Should I consider surrendering these policies to pay off a chunk of the mortgage (early repayment fee 3%) or are they likely to provide as good a return as a cash deposit.

I currently manage to save some money every month and have been investing in cash ISAS, if I surrendered the endowments I would probably put an amount equivalent to the monthly premiums saved into my pension.

Any advice would be very welcome, thank you.

Met_Bobby

My advice would be to go see an IFA.