Standard Life Endowment Help Again!!

mleonard79

Hi Ed,

Thanks for the explanations - makes things clearer. I did hear about the first effort to demutualise and I know we would have got a much more substantial share issue then than we got this time but no point crying over split milk I guess! It does sound like SL has been mismanaged horribly and they've thrown our money down a plethora of drains :mad:

We do realise that keeping the endowment is a risk but don't worry I will be monitoring it very closely. If it does slip back to making very little I will quickly sell it. I'd like to hang on and see what the possible bonus dunstonh has mentioned for Feb might be though and also the fact there is a mortgage promise is a swaying factor. We should get between £1250 and £1850 odds from them at the end of term from that pot (They have confirmed that this policy is marked to get a pay-out from this) and so even if it starts to slightly underperform again it may be worth hanging on just for that as say we get £1500 that's worth £25 a month til the end of the term for us. Like I said before it needs really to be growing by £50-60 per month for it to be worth keeping (over paying it into the mortgage) so with the mortgage promise it only really needs to grow say £30-40 pm for it to be viable. Hope you understand my figures - I think they're right! You're probably right that it won't end up making more than 4% but that extra would push it up over 5% wouldn't it? Thanks for the help.

Regards

Michelle

dunstonh

It does sound like SL has been mismanaged horribly and they've thrown our money down a plethora of drains :mad:

Its more a case of had been rather than has. The current board appear to be much more reliable in making business decisions than the old board which made a right mess of things and cost SL billions.

mleonard79

Hi Dunstonh,

Thanks for that - it's reassuring to know that the new people are starting to put things right! What do you think of the quotes I got from TEP exchange - does that indicate to you that I'm doing the right thing hanging on to it for now? Thanks.

Michelle

EdInvestor

The mortgage promise depends on the WP fund making 6% a year, every year.
In the first half this year, it made 2%.How much does it have to make in the second half?

Half of the Wp fund (approx) is invested in cash and bonds, which after charges will make around 2%.Thus if the stockmarket doesn't out perform at double digit levels all the time, every year, you've had it.

Good luck to you, but frankly, I wouldn't bother because it's a racing certainty that this won't happen.

mleonard79

Hi Ed,

I thought the condition that the funds had to make 6% was abandonned in 2004 when they pretty much went back on the promise saying there was no way the funds could make this amount and therefore they couldn't pay out the maximum amounts they had promised? They then apparently set aside £3-400odd million into a fund for discretionary pay-outs to eligible members however - Have I got this wrong?

They've assured me that we are eligible and in line for the pay-out. I don't see how they can get away with assuring us of at least £1240 and then not paying out but, of course, I agree with you that they're not to be trusted and I'll only believe they'll pay it out when I see it happen! We definitely won't be counting on this money though - if the policy starts to dip under making £50-60 a month again and the final bonus doesn't rise in Feb I'll sell it. I just feel it's worth hanging onto it for this little bit longer just to make sure but to be honest if it hadn't grown the way it has lately I would still have been of a mind to sell. Thanks for the info.

Regards

Michelle

Nytehawk

Can you explain how to find out the current value of my WP policy with Standard Life.............. And how to trackl it on a monthly basis. Make it simple please:beer:

dunstonh

mazdamansport wrote:

Can you explain how to find out the current value of my WP policy with Standard Life.............. And how to trackl it on a monthly basis. Make it simple please:beer:

You either ask the servicing IFA who has internet/back office access to valuations or you can ring Standard Life. Standard Life will not always disclose terminal bonuses to the consumer although they do to IFAs. This very much depends on the type of bonuses the plan has.

Depending on whether it is a conventional with profits or a unitised with profits, you may not be able to track it very easily. Unitised with profits is easy to track but if you are in the unitised with profits fund, then you should be looking to fund switch out ASAP (if free of MVR) in which case, knowing how to track it would be unneccessary.

thomasperfecto

You could also sell your policy.
Companies such as https://www.surrendalink.co.uk & https://www.tepexchange.com claim you can get upto 35% than the surrender value for a standard life policy.

mleonard79

Hi mazdaman sport,

Can you explain how to find out the current value of my WP policy with Standard Life.............. And how to trackl it on a monthly basis. Make it simple please

I went to the Standard Life website and signed up to look at my account online so now just go in and check the value of it online every month or whenever I feel like. I find this the easiest way to track how it's doing - I don't do anything in depth like track the actual funds my money is in as I'm not really expert on these things and wouldn't know what I was looking for! To be honest I don't even know which funds they utilise for the policy. I think my policy is a conventional with profits one though and the terminal bonus for it is disclosed on the account webpage when I log in. Then I just look at how much the policy's grown in the last month and take off the premium paid in and that gives me a figure of growth. I'll paste the link to register below. Hope that helps!

http://portal.standardlife.com/content/customer/customer_index.html?source=portal_subimage

Regards

Michelle

mleonard79

Thomasperfecto,

Wow - do they actually claim they can pay 35% more than the surrender value?! God if they were willing to pay that for a policy I would say it's one you should hold on to with both hands! When I put my details in it came out at £600 more than the surrender value which is around 5-6% of the value. I thought that wasn't bad :rotfl: It is a good easy way to find out the value of your policy even if you don't intend to sell it though.

Regards

Michelle