Endowment advice sought

stevenatleven

EdInvestor wrote: »

OK, that explains it.

If you want to make a further check on the investment outlook, you would need to find out the investment mix of the Clerical Medical WP fund - how much is invested in equities and property vs cash and bonds. They should be able to tell you this on the phone.

Post the figures on here and we can give a view on the potential in that area.

Called CM and they could,nt give a breakdown of the WP fund,they said it
was in an old fund that ran on traditional lines.(whatever that means)

EdInvestor

God, useless aren't they?

http://www.clericalmedical.co.uk/Business/FundsPrices/WithProfits.asp

If you click on this link further down the page you'll see another link to the With profits investment factsheet.Click on that.

It shows the CM WP fund is split around 50/50 between risk based assets like equities and property and low return ones like cash and bonds.So it's not a zombie.But even so over the last 5 years, it only managed an annual return of 3.2%. Deduct taxes and charges,fees for guarantees and so on and you are looking at pretty minimal gains.Making even 4% return looks like quite a struggle.

One for the bin,I'd say.

mrswack

Casting my mind back to my days working for Eagle Star in their Endowment Review Call Centre during the late 90's when they all kicked off I do recall surrendering policies really was a no no, especially so far to the end of a policy.

I know we had a terminal bonus of between 80-90% of bonuses so 70% of your bonuses accrued to date (so in your case around an additional 4k) Now obviously depending on the funds performace this may have dropped, but it would really be worth calling...again...this time asking what their terminal bonus rates have been for the past few years on maturing policies, this may give you a better idea of the additional bonus you would get at the maturity and if it would more than cover the £900+ payments you have to pay in (which I believe it would).

Personally, if I were in your position I would sit tight and hang on, you still have life cover for the next few years and could be in line for a nice little bonus.

Anyway, goodluck with that one...

Paula

EdInvestor

mrswack wrote: »

I know we had a terminal bonus of between 80-90% of bonuses so 70% of your bonuses accrued to date (so in your case around an additional 4k) Now obviously depending on the funds performace this may have dropped, but it would really be worth calling...again..

LOl, it would be worth ringing once more if you can stand it.Ask what percentage of the current value of your policy is made up of terminal bonus. This should illustrate the fact that TBs have been on a declining trend for years now, so you could expect yours to go down a bit more from that by maturity.

Some companies aren't paying any TB at all now .Standard Life recently joined that group, I thought I'd never hear the day.:rolleyes:

stevenatleven

Right Paula I will call again and see if I can get some more info on the terminal bonus.

I will post their response