Nationwide & Endowments?

defender_of_the_weak

I received an email today regarding the Nationwide that mentioned some of the other mutual societies and the way they handle complaints. Supposedly this was in the Sunday Telegraph 26th of March (possibly 19th) but I can find no reference to any such story on their website. Has my friend got the details wrong or can anyone shed a light or link to help me search this out.

EdInvestor

Details here

Given the Nationwide's supposed commitment to "ethical practices" this behaviour is very questionable.

Have you any details of poor practice at other mutuals, Defender?

defender_of_the_weak

Ed

Most of the other mutuals seem fairly okay, but I should point out that I have never had a case time barred by Nationwide either.

The whole issue of time bars is open to wide interpretation by the companies and they use past reviews, at the ten year point for unit linked policies, client enquiries, dates of surrender typos on forms or anything else they think they can reasonably get away with to kick complaints in to the long grass.

Friends Provident were reported today for time barring a case where a couple had been dealing with the serious illness of their baby and mental breakdown of one partner. Apparently they 'kept them notified on every occassion'.

Time barring under the limitations act can only take place when you know you have suffered a loss, most policyholders have a projection of possible loss. which is often provided with a backdrop of it will probably get better by the advisers who are contacted.

The FSA and FOS seem more interested in trying to legislate claims companies out of existence than getting the big financial institutions to face up to the inadequacies of their staff and competency regime.

People need to face up to facts, this is only going to get worse. L & G have now announced that they will time bar having said for years they would not. The cynical amongst you may believe that by entering the time bar arena late on, they will limit the window of opportunity for people to claim thereby reducing claim volumes.

Does anyone have any other time bar horror stories?

vinno65

Hi defender of the weak,
how about this for a time bar horror story. Had a miss-selling complaint upheld by FP. However I had asked for a 22 year mortgage to run concurrent with and finish at the same time as an existing one. I was advised to take out a 25 year endowment and cash in early (there would be enough in there after 22 years I was told). FP however calculated my redress on the basis of a 25 year repayment. I believed it should have been calculated on the basis of a 22 year mortgages as this was the compliant and proper advice I should have been given. FP disagreed saying I could not have afforded a 22 year term so the 25 year term was correct.
Off we went to the FOS, who initaially found in favour of FP. A year later the FOS adjudicator found out that by FP's own figures I should never have been sold a 25 year term either,so their argument was completely blown away and the adjudicator contacted them and asked them to recalculate redress using a 22 year term (the difference was about £1500). At this point FP time barred this part of my complaint because I knew from the outset that the endowment had been set for 25 years. This is so but only because this is what they advised me to do!!. The FOS however upheld the time bar!!.
So I took FP to the small claims court. To my horror FP now said I was entitled to nothing as they had sent me a letter saying they would rescind any offers of redress unless I settled by a specific date. This letter was sent to me during the complaints process so I sent a reply stating that I thought it unfair, never the less they insisted in court I was entitled to nothing.
They offered no defence other than my claim was out of time (in fact they tried to have it struck out before it even got to court but failed) They claimed that I was outside the time limits of the Limitations act 1980 as they had sent me a reprojection (red letter) in Aug 2000 alerting me to the risks of endowments.
I won't bore you with the details but I argued against this letter being used and the Judge agreed so I won my case.
If more people took these firms to court we might see a change in attitude
regards Vinno

defender_of_the_weak

Vinno,

Nothing surprises me with FP. Going to court is a route I am turning to more and more because the big companies use the most obscure and incorrect interpretations of the law and mis-quote key phrases to get out of accepting liability for their past failings. In turn we see this load of crap upheld by the Ombudsman office many of whom it appears have little financial services knowledge or consumers see their cases rejected by the first level fos filtering process who have even less knowledge than the adjudicators.

To cap it all, when FP time bar they send a little pamphlet that contains things like 'we are doing this to be fair to all our policyholders' what utter rubbish.

The FSA should show some teeth and drop the time bar completely, people could then wait and see what happens, and in many cases there will not be the loss at all

vinno65

Hi defender of the weak,

I fully agree with you, but as to allowing policies to run till maturity, although I agree with you that this is what should happen, in most cases, especially with the firms higlighted as having poor performing funds, the shortfalls could well be much larger that the redress currently being paid out by these firms. For many of them paying redress could actually be construed as a money saving exercise. Which is why I believe we have these time bars in the first place. Technically as you know you can't work out your actual loss until the policy matures. If these endowments were still such a good deal as many financial experts are saying why are the firms falling over themselves to get this all sorted now. Could it be that the losses suffered over the last few years on the stock market are unrecoverable over the next 10-15 years which is when most of these policies are due to mature? As someone said in an ealier post how many high flying fund managers are looking after lame duck with profits funds?
regards Vinno



As for FP the Quakers would be turning in their graves!!
regards Vinno

EdInvestor

As for FP the Quakers would be turning in their graves!!

Quite so.Both FP and the Nationwide are constantly promoting themselves as ethical companies.

I always feel that this kind of hypocrisy is especially distasteful.