Report Endowment Misselling Compensation SUCCESSES

rainbow1

Thanks to Martins emails about endowment misselling, i read the info on the site and printed off the relevent info for my mum and she recieved an offer last week for £10,000 from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme

mayb_2

I would get out of the endowment unless someone can promise you the final amount - unlikely. Imagine if it starts to shortfall again. Take out a repayment mortgage and if you have some change put it in an ISA. I have put my fingers in my ears so I don't hear all of those financial advisors shouting.

denzil42

Has anybody had any success with the FSA after being told by their endowment company that their claim is time barred.

mayb_2

According to defenderoftheweak nobody has ever successfully challenged the time bar rule in court. What you need to know is whether you can challenge the imposition of the time bar if the company has broken the 'rules' in keeping you informed that your mortgage is shortfalling etc. I think the place to take this would be the Ombudsman rather than the FSA - but I don't know whether anyone has succeeded in such a complaint.

I think the whole concept of the time bar is wrong and the more people that challenge it one way or another the better. If a large group of people challenged it with the FSA or maybe their MP perhaps it might start a rumble somewhere - there has got to be a way.

vinno65

Hi Mayb,
this is not strictly true. I took FP to court. It was not about the time bar but FP tried to have my complaint thrown out of court on the basis of the so called red letter they sent me that would have seen my complaint time barred with the FOS. The judge decided that the red letter did not time bar my complaint from court. The FSA/FOS have seen and discussed this decision but have decided that it does not apply to them and the time bar rules they have in place do still stand.

Also one thing people will have to remember if they want to take a firm to court is that they will try to have the case thrown out if the endowment is more than 15 years old. There are arguments that coulkd possibly over come this 15 year long stop rule (which the FOS/FSA don't apply, go figure!) but as far as I know these arguments have not been tested in court yet. Perhaps some brave soul will win

regards Vinno

tracey3758

we took out an endowment policy in november 1986,the building society was abbey national the policy was with standard life.i downloaded a claim form through mse on 29.12.06. after filling a few forms that took no more than 20mins. i received a letter on 01.02.07. saying they would give us one thousand five hundred and forty pounds(sorry pound sign dosen`t work on computer).the original ammount borrowed was 10,800 pounds.i was led to believe that if we took out the policy before 1987 we wouldn`t get anything back, but glad to say we have

davidg_croydon

Bank/Provider: Clerical Medical (now Royal Bank Scotland)
Compensation: £1,150 (£67 a month, £55800 target, 25 year term)
The story: Hello, I got one of Martin's e-mails just before Christmas and it finally spurred me into doing something about my endowment. I was first warned in January 2004, so had to act before the end of January 2007. I hadn't claimed before as I had actually paid off my mortgage after 9 years in 2000 and was simply continuing with the endowment as a savings plan, so didn't think I could claim. I had also read that you had to surrender your policy if you were successful, something that I didn't wish to do.

Anyway, I wrote to them using the standard template and got a request for further information after 2 weeks and received my offer last week.

They can't prove whether or not I was informed of the risks.

So, result is I can keep the policy going and am now building myself a new PC and going to Disneyland with the family using the money.

mayb_2

originally posted by vino65

I took FP to court. It was not about the time bar but FP tried to have my complaint thrown out of court on the basis of the so called red letter they sent me that would have seen my complaint time barred with the FOS. The judge decided that the red letter did not time bar my complaint from court. The FSA/FOS have seen and discussed this decision but have decided that it does not apply to them and the time bar rules they have in place do still stand.

I am sorry I missunderstood you first time round vinno - but somehow that is even worse. Most people cannot afford to risk taking a case to court so are forced to tackle this through the Ombudsman. If the Ombudsman can make up his own rules and apply them willy nilly (and I have experience of this myself) what hope for justice then. When I challenged the Ombudsman on some of his unjoined up thinking I was reminded that this was not a court of law and I was still able to take my case to court. This was always followed by a warning that having been judged by the Ombudsman I was unlikely to receive a different verdict.

I remain convinced that I could have won my case in court because of the weight of written evidence I had to support it, including evidence of lies and misrepresentations of facts from the company concerned, however, I will never be able to afford to take that chance. The Ombudsman also had sight of the evidence and chose not to consider it - as he said himself he was not obliged to look at all of the evidence. It is difficult to imagine a judge coming out with such a statement in a court of law.

vinno65

Hi Mayb,
if the claim is for under £5000 then you have a route through the small claims where cost are limited if given at all, it's discrencry. Remember your claim is for redress not the total which would include the surrender value if thats what you want to do. In my case the judge agreed that the FOS had got itt wrong on time bars, however as time goes on there is the 15 year long stop to get round as this I asure you will be their first line of defence. But there are caveats in the limitation laws in cases of fraud or mistake where even the 15 year rule can be overcome it just need some one to try it.

regards Vinno

mayb_2

Thanks for that vinno, unfortunately this was more in the region of £23,000 and was not attached to a mortgage so same rules did not apply.

I have posted a bit more on this under the endowment misselling - new article thread ,as this is about successes here and this most definately wasn't one of those.