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cash in endowment 17 months early or take out bigger mortgage?

Options
I've put my house up for sale. It has around 17 months left on the mortgage which is made up of part repayment and part endowment policies.

My endowments have done well under the circumstances and if I cash them in tomorrow they will already be about £1300 more than I need to pay the mortgage off.

My options are to either use the cash from the house sale to clear the mortgage and then continue to pay the endowments a further 17 months. Then (hopefully) get a lot more for them, which I can use to reduce the new mortgage - but this will mean I have to initially borrow £22,000 more on the new mortgage until I get the endowments cashed in - in 17 months.

The second option is to cash them in now, pay off the morgage and borrow £22,000 less.

Which makes most sense? Am I likely to get much more for the policies when they have matured than cashing them in now? And if so, will the extra interest I will have to pay for the 17 months until they mature cancel out the benefits?
Whitegoodshelp
«1

Comments

  • silvercar
    silvercar Posts: 49,510 Ambassador
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Academoney Grad Name Dropper
    generally the terminal bonus paid on policies would make it worthwhile holding onto them. just make sure you can overpay without penalties on your new mortgage.
    I'm a Forum Ambassador on the housing, mortgages & student money saving boards. I volunteer to help get your forum questions answered and keep the forum running smoothly. Forum Ambassadors are not moderators and don't read every post. If you spot an illegal or inappropriate post then please report it to forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com (it's not part of my role to deal with this). Any views are mine and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.com.
  • Thanks. The 17 months premiums will be £600 and then there would be 17 months interest on the extra £22,000 I'd need to borrow to clear the current mortgage without the endowments.

    I don't know how to work out the interest on £22,000 over 17 months, but are the combined extra costs likely to be much less than the expected extra endowment value at full term?
    Whitegoodshelp
  • EdInvestor
    EdInvestor Posts: 15,749 Forumite
    Which company is the endowment provider?
    Trying to keep it simple...;)
  • Main one was with Scottish Amicable but got taken over by Prudential some years back, and the smaller one is with Legal & General

    Cheers
    Whitegoodshelp
  • EdInvestor
    EdInvestor Posts: 15,749 Forumite
    Have a trawl through here for some sample TB rates:

    http://www.foster-and-cranfield.co.uk/endowment-auction-catalogue.htm
    Trying to keep it simple...;)
  • Mr_helpful
    Mr_helpful Posts: 3,233 Forumite
    anyone who advised you to cash in your endowment with only 17 mths to run would probably get shot by the FSA
    I like to give people as many choices as possible to do what I want them to. (Milton H Erickson I think)
  • MortgageMamma
    MortgageMamma Posts: 6,686 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Has someone told you to encash these endowments or did you think of that by yourself? It would be really unwise to do anything with them if you only have 17 months to run - the penalties would most likely outweigh the potential benefits of doing so. Have you received written surrender values from your endowment providers?
    I am a Mortgage Adviser

    You should note that this site doesn't check my status as a mortgage adviser, so you need to take my word for it. This signature is here as I follow MSE's Mortgage Adviser Code of Conduct. Any posts on here are for information and discussion purposes only and shouldn't be seen as financial advice.
  • EdInvestor
    EdInvestor Posts: 15,749 Forumite
    It should be mentioned that endowment payout values are still falling at most insurance companies: so it's possible that the OP would be better off by cashing in early - that's been the case for the last few years at quite a few offices.

    It didn't used to be this way of course, it's a result mainly of the stockmarket crash in 2000-2003. The "smoothing" process of WP policies mean that the full effects of that take years to feed through to policies - which can produce the kind of anomaly we are talking about here.

    Example from a year ago:

    This is Money

    Although ScotAm was the only office on the list to increase its payout, the tiny increase would have meant that if the OP had waited, he would have lost out because the additional premiums would have been wasted.

    So he's quite right to ask the question.
    Trying to keep it simple...;)
  • dunstonh
    dunstonh Posts: 119,621 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    It should be mentioned that endowment payout values are still falling at most insurance companies

    Apart from those that are going up and more have gone up in the last year than gone down.
    Example from a year ago:

    Which reflects the position last year. Not now
    if the OP had waited, he would have lost out because the additional premiums would have been wasted.

    What about the guaranteed sum assured that would have been reduced if he had surrendered. Its not just about what you could make elsewhere but what you would lose in surrendering early.

    Any alternative has to beat the penalty and what the endowment makes to show a profit. A 10% penalty and a 3% annual bonus rate would mean the alternative would have to be worth more than 13% to put you in a profit.
    I am an Independent Financial Adviser (IFA). The comments I make are just my opinion and are for discussion purposes only. They are not financial advice and you should not treat them as such. If you feel an area discussed may be relevant to you, then please seek advice from an Independent Financial Adviser local to you.
  • jamesd
    jamesd Posts: 26,103 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    From the link EdInvestor posted, about Scottish Amicable 25 year policies: "paying a Terminal Bonus equal to 51 per cent of the Sum Assured and attaching Reversionary Bonuses".

    At 5% the mortgage for 22,000 for 17 months will cost about 1574 in extra payments. Total of 2174 in costs to keep the endowment.

    It seems very likely that you're better off keeping the endowment. If you do, please post the result here when you know the answer.
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