New & need advice

yeman

Can anyone advise
In 1994 we purchased 50% of our home through what was then a DIYSO scheme. We took an Endowment Mortgage with the Halifax. At that time there was a lot of people to deal with and a huge amount of documents etc.We remember the advisor at the Halifax saying for us to have the mortgage we had to take out Life Insurance and it had to be with Standard Life..never really understood the mortgage and never had time to look into it with having two young children and both working 40hrs a week. In 2002 we were struggling with our finances and heard other people saying they had cashed in their Life Insurance,we gathered we didn't need ours as if anything happened we were worth quiet a bit from redudancies etc , so we rang SL and told them we wanted to cash in our Life Insurance, no problem cheque will be with you in 4 working days.We had no idea it was actually a saving pot to pay the 18,500 at the end of the 25year term, there was no mention of endowment on the letter from SL. It has only been the last few months we have realized what we have done `how stupied have we been -idiots. We have only been paying the interest to the Halifax for 15years and I gather thats around 15,000-18. We have decided to go down the lines of mis selling due to the lack of understanding basically. We have wrote a letter to the Halifax with the above information ( was hoping thet would call us in to try and sort this mess out ) but they told us they didn't sell us the mortgage it was a IFA ? on the IFA letters in the heading it says Agents for the Halifax ? anyway we have wrote to them now regards mis selling . No wonder we've never had a reprojection letter. Not sure what to do or where to go. Any advise would be very much appreciated. Thanks

DVardysShadow

25 years is up in 2019. So you have 10 years to find £18500. Best route is to overpay. Suggest you take this part of the problem to the Mortgage-Free Wannabe board.

As for mis-selling, I think you would be knocked back very comprehensively. If you did not have the time to understand your mortgage previously, you might find taking a mis-selling claim to a conclusion to be a big struggle.

opinions4u

on the IFA letters in the heading it says Agents for the Halifax ? anyway we have wrote to them now regards mis selling . No wonder we've never had a reprojection letter. Not sure what to do or where to go.

"Agents for Halifax" means they were operating a counter service for Halifax transactions.

There may well have been a Halifax sign above the door, but agencies operate within the premises of another business, usually an estate agent, IFA or solicitor's office.

It also means that Halifax aren't in any way liable for the sale of the endowment, the IFA is.

No wonder we've never had a reprojection letter

What did the letter say?

yeman

It said 'thank you for your request to surrender your Standard Life plan. I confirm that the plan has now been surrendered. Please note this is a binding agreement and the transaction cannot be reversed at a later date.?

opinions4u

Ok. I misunderstood. I thought that letter was from the IFA.

The next step, if you haven't already, is to pursue the complaint with the IFA who sold the policy.

yeman

Firstly thank you for reply.We have wrote to the IFA,but not heard back yet. What I can't seem to understand is - we never met the IFA unless the person who had sold us the endowment in the Halifax building was from the IFA we were under the impression she worked for the Halifax . How can someone from another company sell you a Halifax Mortgage ?