Pre FSA Endowment rules with Standard Life

Spence_2

On the 12th April 1988 I started an endowment policy with Standard Life for £51k over 25 years.
It was sold to me by an advisor (Peter Rainbow Associates) who were later to become part of Countrywide Principal Services.
As I feel the policy was missold I wrote to Countrywide who replied stating they will not look into it as it was pre 29th April 1988. When I spoke to them on the phone however they did tell me they no longer had my files!
I wrote to the FOS who said that because Peter Rainbow were an IFA and the policy was pre 29th April it is not under their jurisdiction and I should contact the IFA or take legal advice.

My questions are:-
1) haven't I already contacted the IFA by writing to Countrywide, should I be doing something more?
2) Has anyone had a similar case and suceeded in the legal approach?
3) Is this worth taking to a claims company and let them have a try? i.e. I would get 50% of something rather than 100% of nothing.

Thanks

dunstonh

1) haven't I already contacted the IFA by writing to Countrywide, should I be doing something more?

You have contacted the company responsible for the compliance of that individual and they have correctly rejected it.

2) Has anyone had a similar case and suceeded in the legal approach?

Expensive option as to consider as you will be liable for costs if you lose and there isnt a strong case and I would expect most solicitors to put you off.

3) Is this worth taking to a claims company and let them have a try? i.e. I would get 50% of something rather than 100% of nothing.

Most wont touch it as there is no-one to complain to. The firm has rejected it and it was taken before the jurisdiction of the FOS came about. The only ones likely to take it onboard are the ones that you would have to pay for up front. They will then send a letter, just as you have, and get the same response back that you got.

Its basically end of the road.

To put a positive spin on it, you wont have a massive shortfall, you would have been paying less each month most years and you got a windfall recently. Plus many of the reasons endowments have not performed as well have actually made us better off in other ways by far more then potential shortfall. Had the old economy carried on, endowments would have kept paying surpluses but we would have all been worse off.

Dont waste your time chasing options which dont exist and start looking forward rather than backwards. You have just over 6 years left and if you address the issues now, you will probably find it fairly easy to close any potential shortfall that may exist (noting that standard life projections are notoriously unreliable on their conventional with profits plans and do usually understate the real position).

Spence_2

Thanks for your advise.

Number 1) was confusing as I had sent the FOS the letter from Countrywide and iit was they that said I should contact the IFA. I guess they sent me a standard letter?


Sppencer

dunstonh

Its bad wording more than anything else. Probably down to the number of different business models that can exist. They may have thought the name of the firm originally indicates a sole trader. The firm is one thing, the IFA (the person) is another. One individual can cover both things when they are a sole trader. The complaint is dealt with by the firm to which the IFA is attached to or by a network or outsourced compliance company. If you were to complain to the IFA individually, he would just pass it to the person responsible for his compliance. In this case it is the company you mentioned.

The way of looking at this is that a number of rules and requirements came into being on 29th April 1988. If the rules were not followed after that date, you have a system designed to deal with it. However, it would be unfair to the advisers involved if they were liable for things that were not required at the point they did it. They may not have done things which are required under current rules but there were no rules in place to tell them what to do at the point they did it.

Another way of looking at it is do you prosecute someone who fox hunted 20 years ago because the law changed 2 years ago.

EdInvestor

Just to note that some (possibly most) people who bought policies before April 1988 are covered for misselling.These are the cases where the policy was sold by a bank or building society, or by someone who was acting legally as an agent of the provider insurance company at the time.

This is because these big companies have agreed on a voluntary basis to treat these cases as though they were covered by the later rules.

It's only pre 1988 policies that were sold by independent brokers that are excluded, as they have refused to apply the rules retrospectively.

toonfish

EdInvestor wrote:

It's only pre 1988 policies that were sold by independent brokers that are excluded, as they have refused to apply the rules retrospectively.

and rightly so

dunstonh

And I bet knowing what they know now, that most tied firms wish they had not have volunteered to consider pre 88 complaints.