MSEers Act Now: WP Policy? Missold Endowment? Reattribution Bribe? FSA wants to hear!

peterbaker

Respond here or [EMAIL="//cp11_05@fsa.gov.uk"]here[/EMAIL] by next Tuesday 24th May 2011.

The Financial Services Authority has finally done an about turn on what was wrong with the way the entire life assurance industry deliberately drove With Profits business into the buffers.

They have published a Consultation paper and they invite responses from interested parties, and that includes consumers via this webpage here: www.fsa.gov.uk/Pages/Library/Policy/CP/2011/cp11_05_response.shtml or [EMAIL="//cp11_05@fsa.gov.uk"]email them[/EMAIL]


Let's give them an MSE sized response.

If you have ever had a With Profits endowment that fell well short of what it said on the tin, please go to that webpage and tell them what you think.

Doesn't matter if you surrendered it or you got compensation for 'misselling' - go and tell them what you think.

If you took the reattribution bribes from AXA or from Aviva or were simply worried about it happening at Prudential - no matter - register your disapproval because as things stand if you were in the first two groups you sold your interest in the "inherited estate" part of your funds (yes your funds not theirs) far too cheaply, and if in the last group, you had a lucky escape!

reattribution was a contrived word when the life assurance industry introduced it to the language just ten years ago - like all poorly prepared stuff for the digestion of the masses, it has begun to smell very bad indeed now.

If you have part of your pension tied up (literally) in a With Profits policy of some kind and are threatened with an MVR to discourage you from transferring to something better (another smelly introduction dropped into the arena by the life assurance companies to suit their agenda not yours), then respond now before Tuesday 24 May next week.

You may not understand a word of the consultation paper , but don't let that stop you telling the FSA exactly what you think.

Just send them an email at [EMAIL="cp11_05@fsa.gov.uk"]cp11_05@fsa.gov.uk[/EMAIL] if that is more your style. [EMAIL="//cp11_05@fsa.gov.uk"]Email[/EMAIL] is equally valid as a method of formal response to the consultation document as this.

Those of you that understand the gobbledegook may be able to take them to task using gobbledegook of your own, but either way ...

Tell them before Tuesday 24th May 2011.

They have invited you to respond. You are a consumer. They say the paper is aimed at you too. If you are lucky, and the FSA don't complain about what you write and try to gag you, all your comments will be published in a formal response document.

All of us know parents or brothers or sisters or children or friends or cousins who were stuffed by Endowment shortfalls. All of us know people who received unsolicited reams of paper from weird sounding offices like that of the 'Policyholder Advocate' (I defy anyone to name one and spell the name correctly), and from crooked life assurance offices saying "Vote now for reattribution before you lose your cash and it is too late" - it was our money they were giving to us to bribe us to say a permanent goodbye to ten times that amount which they knew full well we were entitled to as WP policyholders, yet the FSA let it happen then, like it was normal. Normal my a$$ :mad:

Maybe not so permanent now the FSA sees the error of its ways - maybe if enough of us are heard then all of us can get back what is rightly ours.

Let's use the power of MSE to make it the biggest response yet to an FSA paper that they hoped would only attract a closed shop audience :money::money::money:

peterbaker

Last chance :money:

(deadline is tomorrow and I don't know exactly when the bar will drop)

Milarky

Some context to this, please? This came out on 24 February originally, so this is a bit last minute isn't it. The document is 100 (well, 99) pages in length, so what are the issues identified by the somnabulant regulators?

IMO, 'with profits' is legalised theft (via 'smoothing') propped up by confusion marketing (also criminally legal) combined with high levels of customer inertia/in-elasticity and general credulousness. Just look at the vain attempt to get a simple answer to a simple question on these very boards - or anywhere else, for that matter -for the last decade. Worried consumer: "Should I surrender my WP policy, or stick with it [to the grime end]?" Standard reply: "That depends on too many things to be able to give a simple answer". That's the financial equivalent of the dictionary definition of "recursive".

Any product which allows for the mixing of clients' money (in this case, with other clients' money!) is a form of Ponzi scheme*. With profits are actually riskier (to the individual who cannot 'see' where he stands in the smoothing queue) than the underlying assets they invest in - because investors actually pool none of the risk (over time) but thereby forgo all of the control which they could have by direct holding of exactly the same shares (etc)

Had anyone listened before, my answer would have been:
1) stop selling new WP
2) unitise all holdings into individual (i.e. 'equal' shares) accounts
3) transact soley in these units therafter.

But, of course, the arrogance ('we know best') of insurers would have stopped that happening since it would be equivalent of the 'smoking causes cancer' message being applied to their product. [Something like this logic is what stops a long hard - and honest - look at pension funds occurring as they scrabble to buy more time - always 'more time']

*mis-selling as a remedy can't work - it simply guilds the Ponzi further as people who 'knew more' are tapped-out by the people who 'knew less' - the statutory equivalent of queue-jumping.

peterbaker

Sorry Milarky but I only noticed this "consultation paper" milarky myself one week ago.

I have responded on the necessary form and have also made reference to the fact that even the FSA are asking questions like they are trying to protect Ponzi schemes.

Who turned WP into Ponzi is what I want to know.

Interesting that we are both using the same word quite independently of the paper itself which as fa as I know doesn't mention Ponzi by name even once.