Endowment update: payouts still falling

Mr_helpful

not much of an answer is it I will ask again why does anyone sign their name on a piece of paper

mayb_2

I will repeat it then - if you get someone to sign a peice of paper agreeing that they have received and understood the advice given it would be to ensure that you could produce it later and say look they signed to say they had received and understood the advice given. So = to cover your bottoms from a later claim of misselling. Get it now?

"The signing of a piece of paper does not mean that the contents have necessarily been fully understood or that the paperwork the person was signing was read either." It just means something like "so if you could just sign here and here that completes your application." Rather than "if you would like to take that home with you and read through it and if there is anything you don't understand come back and see me and I will explain it to you." for instance.

By the way what do you understand by the requirements of the Data Protection Act? I don't think it is meant to protect firms from having to disclose the contents of the files they have on a client to the client. It is unauthorised access by a third party I think you will find.

"The right of subject access - gives individuals the right to obtain information held about themselves"

dunstonh I was shocked to read that it is still not a requirement to ask the client to read and sign the fact find document. That means that an adviser can fill this in in anyway they chose to show anything they like and the customer would know nothing about it. I asked for and received copies of the fact find on both of the claims I had for miss selling and they were very supportive of my claims that I was miss sold. I would have thought that without a customer's signature they could not rightly be produced as evidence to support a defence against a missale. Mind you the Ombudsman is very selective in his reading of such documents. It also shows that normal rules of engagement do not apply to the Finance Services Industry.

I did ask for these and for all of the correspondence sent to the Ombudsman by the company I was claiming against - these were sent to me on request -very interesting what a Company will do when they don't think you will see what they are up to.

dunstonh

Therefore, the fact remains that you are agreeing that the majority of these were missold - the majority were not sold by IFA's -ergo you are not in a position to say that most of them were not missold.

Like most IFAs, I did time as a tied agent. You generally have to as its very hard to become an IFA without any experience.

I have mentioned this before but my network has been averaging around 1000 complaints a month. Of those over 750 are rejected. 200 are not classed as unproven but redress is payable because documentation is missing or insufficient to support the recommendation to the level required. Only 25 are actual mis-sales.

So, in 10 times more cases payouts are taking place because documentation is not there to support the advice. I'm not saying that it's an excuse for the companies involved. They should have looked after it better or made sure they documented more. However, it just shows the maybe one small paragraph in the reason why letter would have been enough for a case not to be upheld.

mayb_2

If it is missing then it cannot be proven in either direction. You must accept that on the whole the mass populationd did not understand the business of the stock market and it is likely that those with missing documentation fell in to this category. I will say it again - signed paperwork does not prove understanding. If the person involved did not have any other dealings with the stock market it is unlikely that they would have understood the implications. These endowments were not part of someone's portfolio - they were just a mortgage or pensions or savings. These are not the sort of people that a paid IFA would be doing business with.

Don't fight it dunstonh - you are agreeing with me- believe me you are.

toonfish

why would an IFA (which I am) not arrange these type of contracts - of course they did 15 years ago. Time's changed, and among myself and close colleagues I do not think policies were being mis-sold - evidenced by the fact that all claims against me have been rejected by my network or the FOS.

I now run a high street office, and "can I claim on my endowment" is a very common enquiry, whether you choose to believe me or not. The letters from some of the claims companies are hilarious, just p*****g in the wind.

DOTW seems to run a different type of operation, judging by the success rate and I am all for redress where it is due and the client has been misled, not where the client just goes looking for a bit of cash.

Your looking for compensation for your broken dreams is frankly beyond my comprehension, and if people are willing to sign fact finds, application forms and reason why letters without understanding them then what more can the adviser do?

Mr_helpful

mayb wrote: »

I
"The signing of a piece of paper does not mean that the contents have necessarily been fully understood or that the paperwork the person was signing was read either."



dunstonh I was shocked to read that it is still not a requirement to ask the client to read and sign the fact find document.

I would have thought that without a customer's signature they could not rightly be produced as evidence to support a defence against a missale. .

Nothing like contradicting yourself is there One minute the signature is irrelevant the next its very important the only common factor is both conspire to selective memory, that is its important when it suits you.

Here people are just signing without understanding anything about the assett they are buying which is likely o be their largest purchase ever. While on another thread someone is whinging about the interest on a £25 fee for buildings insurance.

defender_of_the_weak

DOTW I make my money by helping people to sift through the somewhat large amount of choice and I dont charge the customer fees. This is rather different from planting methods of sucessful claims into a clients mind and then enhancing selective memory on a form and clocking the client a portion of what you alledge was the clients anyway. I take it you dont get paid unless the client is sucessful which is a rather large carrot whereas I cant sell someone a mortgage if they are not buying a house. You can make a claim even if there is no way it was mis sold and stoill have a chance of getting away with it.


Sifting through large amounts of information, dont make me laugh. Fill in the appropriate fields on the computer and press enter, You may not charge an explicit fee, but the cost of your advice I assume is paid in lender fees which is directly passed to the client. You dont make money unless someone is buying a house, I don't make money unless someone has a missold policy.

As for your comments plant, enhance, allege and getting away with it all of these assume I am a liar... I cant be bothered to respond to this sort of garbage.

To return to an earlier point, all you need is a GCSE and a computer to be a mortgage broker

Dunston 250,000 as an IFA.. gissa job

vinno65

toonfish wrote: »

I know many are lying, they call in and ask how they should claim

I am not surprised if my experience with the FOS is anything to go by. Everything that was set out in the John Tiner letter has been ignored. He stated that a customers remembered evidence was good and sufficient evidence but the FOS rely on documents. My complaint was upheld (eventually) in part on the fact that documents that proved that the risks inherent with endowments had been explained to me could not be found. Now Dunston's and your argument would be that I won by default, but I say that in my case,and I suspect in hundreds of thousands of other cases,especially those sales carried out in building societies and bank by tied agents,these documents never existed because the risks inherent with endowments WERE NOT explained to me or other people.

As to the points raised by Mr Missnamed about people signing documents that stated that they had understood all that had been explained to them.
Let's look at this scenario. A salesman spends 30 minutes explaining to mug punter that endowments are good, repayments are only for the stupid. He extols the virtues of endowments i.e it will definately pay off your mortgage and leave you a lump sum, new car, cruise blah blah blah.
Then he says "now what do you want to be stupid(repayment) or extremely clever(endowment)". Mug punter says "well I'd like to be clever please I'll have the endowment". "Excellent" says salesperson, pound note signs floating in front of his eyes. "Please sign the application form, and if you could just sign this other bit of paper that says you have understood all that I have explained to you, we'll be done".At this point he also passes the product literature explaining that what's just been discussed is also in there.
Mug punter takes the literature home and puts it away safe in a drawer. No need to read it, afterall it's just going to repeat what he was told by the salesperson.
15 years down the line mug punter finds out that not only is his endowment NOT guaranteed to pay off his mortgage, but there could be a sizeable shortfall which he will have to make up himself. He drags out the product literature and dusts it down and starts to read. Low and behold it's there in black and white in a small paragraph at the bottom of page 5. There is a risk that the endowment might not do what it's supposed to. But why didn't the salesman tell him this at the time. If he had he wouldn't of touched an endowment with a bargepole, afterall who would want to risk their house on a punt on the stockmarket?!(he's done a bit of research now you see and can't believe he's been duped.)
Mug punter is angry now and fires of a complaint to the salesman using the template letter from Which. He states he believes he was miss-sold on the grounds that the risks inherent with endowments were never explained to him(and he's right they weren't).
He gets a reply from the salesman stating that the complaint is rejected on the grounds that he signed the form stating he had understood what had been explained to him and was provided with product literature that stated that his premiums would be invested and there was a risk that the endowment might not pay off his mortage.
Mug punter remembers however that the salesman made no mention of the risk at the time of the sale and in fact said at the time that the endowment would definately pay off his mortgage.He finds out also that he is not alone hundreds of thousands of other people were also told the same thing(see House of Commons report). Fired up by the belief that his testimony of what was said at the point of sale was good and sufficient evidence (as per the Tiner letter) he passes his complaint to the FOS. Mr Tiner's letter also states that it is not enough for the salesperson to rely on product literature but that its contents must be explained aswell so mug punter believes he can't lose, he has right on his side.
FOS adjudicator completely ignoring the Tiner letter, states in his rejection of the complaint that as the sale took place so long ago then obviously he can't rely on peoples recollections of what was said and must primarily rely on documents pertaining to the sale. Silly mug punter you've been mugged you signed a bit of paper stating you understood all that had been explained to you.The product literature states there is a risk so go away and don't darken our door again, don't you know we're up to our necks in fraudelent claims from chancers trying to make a quick buck from the hard working and honest brethren of the financial services industry.!

Believe what you like people but I know what happened to me. The scenario above is what happened to me and several friends and aquaintances who I have spoken to(not to mention hundreds of posters on this and other boards)

If none of you have participated in the deliberate miss-sale of endowments then good on you but that does not mean it was not rife in the industry up until the time people finally found out the truth about them.

regards Vinno

absolutebounder

Its a little bit of 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. Yes some policies were miss sold yes there are claimants using lies and selective memory to obtain money by deception.
A little suggestion. Here we have those who say they were miss sold because the didnt listen to the adviser, didnt read anything, signed to say they understood it all but now want redress because they can remember everything from 10 yrs ago about an hour appointment and know that whet they signed for didnt take place.
Instead of the tit for tat exchanges why doesny MAYB, VINNO or EDINVESTOR say how they think details of a sale should be evidenced. All this happened in the past so we cant do anything about it but Im sure the advisers would welcome sensible comment as to how they can cover their backsides in an ethical and agreeable way for the future.

Mr_helpful

Good points Bounder