Endowment shortfall - no communication from bank

Angel2350

Urgent help/advice needed! Our endowment is with Barclays. Mortgage about to finish in August. Heard nothing from bank since 1995. They now say they did not have our new address and they have marked their records as "gone away". We now have a shortfall of £16000 (28%). We moved to this address in 1992 and have paperwork proving Barclays have written to us since then (as stated above).
Do we have any come back or chance of claiming back the shortfall as we had no communication from them due to their incompetency?

maninthestreet

So you've just realised now after 15 YEARS that you have not received your annual endowment statements???

susan47

I doubt it, how can you claim back the shortfall unless it was missold to you in the first place? Everyone has lost money on their endowment policies, ours was taken out in 1991 and is currently £14,000 short. But there's been so much about it over the years in the media that we have slowly paid extra to bring the amount down so that they still match.

You should really have chased the bank for an update. You could try to argue with them that they sent mail to the wrong address, but I'm not sure how far you would get. We are all in the same boat, it's just that we were more aware of it than you. You could try the ombudsman and see what happens there, but it typically takes a year or two to get anywhere there and in the meantime, you still have to pay the mortgage off in August.

You aren't entitled to compensation just because of the shortfall though. Like us and countless others, you must have thought it was a guaranteed return but it wasn't.

dunstonh

Do we have any come back or chance of claiming back the shortfall as we had no communication from them due to their incompetency?

None whatsoever. Even if they uphold a complaint in your favour you wont get that as redress.

We moved to this address in 1992 and have paperwork proving Barclays have written to us since then (as stated above).

Remember that Barclays and Barclays Life are two different companies. Is the paperwork for the "new" address from Barclays life?