Axa sunlife Bonus CashBuilder Plus

stustu92

Hi,

Missis has one of these plans. I think she should cash it in and get what money back she can and stick it in an ISA. What do you all think?

Details:

first payment was on 8/11/2000
Started on £10 per month, now upto £20 per month till 2015.
The total bonus to date is £205.20.

Should she keep it going or cash it in?
Roughly what would she get back if she cashed it in now?

Cheers
Stu

AlexIFA_2

Hi Stu

Difficult to estimate what it's worth. You can just call and ask them for a surrender value. It's probably not worth as much as she has put in. The prospects for funds such as this are fairly poor.

If the money would stay invested until 2015 or later I would personally cash it in and put the proceeds and the £20 a month into an equity ISA, which you would expect would return more than where it is now. It depends how much risk you want to take.

stustu92

Is an equity ISA the only option or are there others? I think it'd need to be low risk.
I'm gonna get her to ring up tomorrow and get a surrender value for it.

silver7

Just to let you know i took out one of these saving plans for 11 years, i think it started at £10 a month and increased by £2 a year. It matured at the end of last year and i worked out how much i had paid in total and i made a grand profit of about £30!!!!! Pehaps that will give you food for thought.

AndyWilson_3

I was advised 10yrs ago by my father to take out one of these, i think i started paying £30 pcm and now im paying £60 and it doesnt mature until Nov 2014.

I rang up recently and they told me i had £7939 and if i was to cash it now i would get £5876.

Now with 5yrs still to run on this they can only guarantee an amount of £6642, they say if i carry on as i am and the assumed rate of growth reaches 4%p.a. i would get £10500 or 8%p.a. i would get £12400.

So how likely am i to get these amounts? Is this one big rip off? shall i take my £5876 and run?

baby_boomer

5 years + 5 months future payments x £60 = £3,900. Cash in value = £5,876.

Total = £9,776

I you invested that today, you could get a 5 year bond offering 3.5% pa after basic rate = over £11,500 guaranteed - and at least four months early.

I know which I'd rely on.

dunstonh

These types of plans were obsolete about 13 years ago. Some of the tied companies kept going with them until around 98 and direct sales (newspapers/TV) kept going until about 2004.

So, its not a case of a rip off but more a case of you buying an obsolete product at the time of buying and 10 years later its even more obsolete.

cardsharps

AndyWilson wrote: »

Is this one big rip off?

Yes, yes, yes.

AndyWilson_3

I guess no one wants to buy my policy off me then? lol