Standard Life to slash policies again?

Rick62

This is the problems with Endowment providers, they treat your money like is theirs, talking about issuing 'bonuses' when they mean investment returns, so there is no way of getting a clear view of performance and returns. As far as I am aware they just make up the terminal bonus as they go along.

Gorgeous_George

VickyM wrote:

Can I ask a really, really stupid question? How do you check your terminal bonus? do I need to ring them up?

With SL, you can phone for a surrender value which is made up of a Basic Value and a Final Value.

Alternatively, you can register at SL's website and check yourself (as I do). I keep the numbers on a spreadsheet to monitot how well, or how appallingly, my policy is doing.



GG

EdInvestor

Rick62 wrote:

However, my thinking is that because the performance has been so dreadful that they will have become deliberatly overcautious and that therefore they will have been giving really rubbish bonuses and payouts currently with the intentiion that going forward that they increase payouts and exceed future expectations.

I wish this were so, but I'm afraid it isn't. Things are unlikely to improve much.The fundamental problem here is that the company lost about 8bn of its free assets in 2001-02, because it left the cash invested in the stockmarket for far too long and nearly became insolvent as a result.It was forced to sell out at the bottom and along with other insurers, to invest a large chunk of the money in bonds to cover policy guarantees - which formerly were at risk :eek: [You are not wroing about making it up as they go along:o ]

Thus, the recovery of the stockmarket has had little effect.

...from both a corporate and personal point of view they can't afford to get it so badly wrong again in the near future, and this should ensure some kind of improved performance. I hope.

Unfortunately they can't deliver much improvement because they simply don't have that much invested in risk based assets any more.They are not the only ones in the same boat of course - Standard is in the middle, along with companies like Friends Provident and Clerical Medical. A better performance can be expected from the Pru, Norwich Union and L&G. Much worse of course from Phonenix,Pearl, Equitable and the other zombies.