Friendly Societies

kikouno

What a fantastic answer dunstonh.

kikouno

EC12345 wrote: »

Thanks. The policy expires on 1 September. They will write to me 6 weeks before termination (so at the end of July) with the final settlement figure .... :eek:

Hopefully your policy has the guarantee.

MCGONIS

Hello. I took out one of these 10 year plans with the UK Civil Service Friendly Society, which merged with Homeowners Friendly which became Engage Mutual. I have been paying £20 a month for 8 years. In this time I have accrued £102.02 in bonus. The previous two years there has been no bonus declared. It has two more years to go. By the time it matures I will have paid £2400. So in these two years I would need to get about £300 in bonus just to break even. I doubt that I will. Even with the terminal bonus that may be added.

I would have been better putting £20 a month in a bank savings account. Least then I would get back what I had paid in! I don't see the point in these savings plans. Steer clear is my advice. Hope that helps someone considering them in the future.

kikouno

MCGONIS wrote: »

Hello. I took out one of these 10 year plans with the UK Civil Service Friendly Society, which merged with Homeowners Friendly which became Engage Mutual. I have been paying £20 a month for 8 years. In this time I have accrued £102.02 in bonus. The previous two years there has been no bonus declared. It has two more years to go. By the time it matures I will have paid £2400. So in these two years I would need to get about £300 in bonus just to break even. I doubt that I will. Even with the terminal bonus that may be added.

I would have been better putting £20 a month in a bank savings account. Least then I would get back what I had paid in! I don't see the point in these savings plans. Steer clear is my advice. Hope that helps someone considering them in the future.

Thanks for the comment. This type of plan seems to be a no go area regardless of provider.

I have been reading the MSE guides and I couldn't find anything about these plans. I think there should be a "sticky" or article to inform people like myself who don't know better:o

dunstonh

I have been reading the MSE guides and I couldn't find anything about these plans. I think there should be a "sticky" or article to inform people like myself who don't know better:o

They are a regulated financial services product. The site is a journalistic site, not a regulated financial advice site. If you go down that route, you have a whole load of compliance issues (and costs) and liability that you dont have currently. A personally, think the site already runs a bit close to the wind in a few places (i.e. the pensions article which is woefully out of date and still promotes a product that hasnt been available for over 2 years and contains figures that are not possible to achieve on the current version of that product). So, its not doing the readers of that article much justice if they follow its unregulated and inaccurate "advice".

Also, if you do it for one product, then you have to start doing it for others. There are also potential exceptions to the rule. So, even a product that is 95% unsuitable will have a small number that it is suitable for.