Do endowment plans still exist?

mgh

Hello

Sorry for what may seem to be a naive question, but many years ago I had an endowment which for £50 per month would give a payout of £45,000 after I think 20 years.

Do plans such as this still exist, or is its equivalent an ISA? I know they ultimately didn't pay out the expected values, but I am interested in a savings plan such as this with some knowledge of the expected value in 10/15/20 years time.

Thanks all

Aegis

They were pretty much pulled from the market entirely after a fairly widespread mis-selling scandal came to a head. At £50 a month, an ISA is likely to offer much better long term prospects. Once you have used those a similar product to endowments exists in the form of Maximum Investment Plans, but these are usually only appropriate for higher rate taxpayers saving considerably more than they can put into ISAs. For basic rate taxpayers there's usually little point in life-based investments other than as a method of mitigating inheritance tax.

As a rule, ISAs offer the best tax efficiency and the most flexibility on investment choice other than directly holding them outside a tax wrapper.

dunstonh

There is one mainstream provider of endowments still available. However, the product doesnt look like it did decades ago. It is packaged as a tax wrapper to be used that can benefit from the life assurance tax wrapper.

However, it will virtually always be below the S&S ISA in the pecking order and in most cases when that is used up, then unwrapped Unit Trust/OIECS/ITs/ETFs etc would be next in the pecking order.