Can I request a list of charges which have been made on my Endowment

SteveDitchburn

Twenty four years ago I bought a twenty-five year 76k with profits Endowment with Scottish Amicable to cover a mortgage I had taken out. At the time they were a recommended company which seemed to be doing reasonably well. The seller advised me verbally to take out a with profits policy because that way 'I would receive a lot more than my mortgage amount'.

Some years later I changed houses, added 24k to my mortgage and took out another endowment to cover this. Both Endowments are due to mature in Spring 2011.

Scottish Amicable were bought out by The Prudential in the nineties (I think) and at the time I was informed that 'thousands of pounds' would be added to each policy in the Endowment fund pool.

For the last few years I have repeatedly received warnings from The Prudential that my policies will probably not reach their required maturity amount - as they are 'with profits' policies I hate to think what final payment they would be making on ordinary policies.

What I would like to do is to ask The Prudential for a list of all charges / payments / deductios etc. taken from my Endowment accounts during the years that the policies have been in operation.

Can anyone tell me whether I have a right to this information and whether The Prudential will be able to provide it?

Many years ago I had a girl friend who sold policies (not for The Pru) who told me that for 25 year policies virtually none of the first five years payments go into your account. Apparently they are all used to pay commission to the policy agent. Obviously no one bothered to mention this to me when the policies were sold.

About three years ago I 'invested' 10k in an HSBC Bond - after around 18 months it was worth 5600!! But more recently it has risen to 12600, a return on around 8% a year after tax which is phenomenal given the current interest rates.

So why are Endowment Companies saying that the past few years have been disastrous and using these warnings as a way of explaining their poor returns when HSBC can pay 8% a year? (and it wasn't a high risk fund, just a normal HSBC managed fund).

It's all too obviously a ploy so that the Endowment boys can pay poor returns and make large charges. That's why I would like to see a list of all charges made against my account.

TrickyDicky101

Endowment returns are at the whim of the stock markets and the investment make-up within the With Profit fund itself of the company. It isn't really possible to compare your HSBC fund to your insurer's WP fund as they may have completely different investment mandates. It sounds as if your HSBC fund may be predominantly equity based whereas the WP fund could have been invested in other types of stock (eg bonds or cash) over the last 25 years.

It wouldn't hurt to ask the insurer for the bonuses applied to your policy over years and an indication of what the terminal bonus is likely to be.

[Deleted User]

As Mr Dicky says - you can't compare the two. The last few years HAVE been very bad. Which means that the HSBC fund has effectively been able to buy discounted stock, which is now recovering. You WP fund may have performed well for 20 years but has now had a lot of its value wiped. A lot of it is to do with timings. You'll probably know that last year was not a great time to be cashing in your pension pot. But a year earlier was fine. And three years from now, it'll probably be fine.

If you have ISAs, you'll see the same thing. Mine did great for 10 years, then lost all of the gains and then some two years ago. But I continued investing, buying the same stock as I had but at cheaper prices. They've now recovered a bit, so while my early investments are still down, the new investments have compensated.