barclays endowment mortgage policy

baffledperson

??? i have an endowment pol with barclays/the pru and need some impartial advice. it has 11 years left, have paid in about 7 g. barclays surrender price 8.5g. money to pay in to the end of term 5g est?. this policy is not tied to a mortgage or house since i sold it last year and moved back to parents. :-[. is it worth carrying on with it or a: selling ? b:leaving alone as a saving account ? C: as b and adding to it and making on the higher interest rate than normal saving accounts(is this right ???)
i pay in £45 a month now, have done for past 10 years (time i had in house with mortgage )and £30 per month for the 4 years before that (as a saving account ) policy is the type of "with profits"
i am new to this site so if this looks like goobbledy gook just bare with me.
any advice greatfully appreciated
p.s. parents have same type policy as well with less than 5 years to go

chipbeck

I look on with interest.
Barclays sold me an Endowment about 8 years ago. I was punching in £300 a month but then (fortunately) reduced my payments to £100 and then (more fortunately) stopped it all together. The upshot is that I put in 11k and it's now worth 5.5k. As you can well appreciate I am more than a little p'd off with them. After all, at the time I was earning a lot of money and as my account was with Barclays they new this. I was contacted by their Financial people and advised to take the policy out, so I did (all 10 of them).
I've since tried to complain, both in writing and in person, to no avail. Amusingly when complaining to the bank manager he said it was nothing to do with him as this selling was undertaken by a different arm of Barclays. In short I don't see how you can get any satisfaction from the Banks, as far as I'm concerned they are just another member of the screw middle Britain society.


I Feel better for getting that off my chest.

baffledperson

:-X :-X :-X what can i say, sorry to here it did not work out ! thanks for reply will let you know what funny reply /deal they are prepared to give me :-/ :-/

dunstonh

Your circumstances are totally different and you have different providers.

Baffled:

AFAIA, Barclays never sold with profit endowments (on their own brand). It is probably one of the companies that they have purchased or an L&G plan.

You need to find out what the guaranteed sum assured is, what the annual bonuses are to date, any final bonus to date, the current value and the surrender value. A couple of those bits you have but you need all them to decide what the best option is.

Barclays will normally supply this in letter form and are usually quite quick.

Chipbeck:

Amusingly when complaining to the bank manager he said it was nothing to do with him as this selling was undertaken by a different arm of Barclays.

Which is totally in breach of the complaints proceedure. Complain again and make the point that you complained before and tell them the response you got. A failure like that would be taken very seriously as it can lead to a fine from the FSA.

However, you didnt say what you were complaining about

The upshot is that I put in 11k and it's now worth 5.5k.

Assuming it was a stockmarket fund you were in, then this would be about right as the stockmarket nearly halved a few years back. You cannot complain about that. Had you continued to pay in, you would have benefited from the stockmarket drop by buying units whilst the FTSE was round the 3600 mark. Its now over 30% up on that low point.

If you could clarify what your complaint is, we may be able to help more.

baffledperson

DD

the letter your on about is in the post, waiting in anticipation to see what it say's. your thought's on selling or surrendering would be appreciated ???
also ,when talking to the finance advisor about this ( if i sold or surrenderd it he tried to sell me on buying into saving's bonds with the money from it and what i have in my normal saving,which i thought was wrong ???.
but when you think back they are only after your custom

dunstonh

when talking to the finance advisor about this ( if i sold or surrenderd it he tried to sell me on buying into saving's bonds with the money from it

Hmm, from one life fund to another life fund with same provider. think fire , frying pan into and out of.

To be honest, i don't think that approach is very well thought out. The ongoing charges may be a bit lower on a modern plan but that would have to be offset against the surrender penalties on the old plan.

chipbeck

Got my yearly bonus info from Barclays today.
Can anyone explain why as mentioned before they sold me ten policies. The reason I was given was because policies would be put in different funds therefore reducing risk. If this is the case then why is each of the policies currently showing the same value? Surely these funds would have returned different values.

dunstonh

One policy can have multiple funds. Having multiple funds is a good idea but there isnt a requirement to have a plan per fund. Also, you mention bonus. Only one fund would get bonuses. The rest would be unit linked which do not get bonuses.

Is it one direct debit and one policy document? Life policies are often segmented into multiple policies under one plan. This can be anything from 10 to 250 segments.