Surrendering a zombie endowment policy

bridgetip

My husband and I bought a property in 1993 with an edowment mortgage. We have since sold the property and repaid the loan. We now live overseas. We continued paying premiums into the endowment, in order to keep the life insurance and get some benefit on maturity.
Unfortunately, this endowment policy was with Sun Alliance. It is now a closed fund and is controlled by a company called Resolution Life. For a long time now we have been receiving letters telling us that the policy will not cover the original loan on maturity. This does not bother us as we have paid the loan off already. However, it seems the performance is getting worse and worse. I did some calculations and worked out that we will not get much more than we put in when the thing matures in 2018. Even this can't be guaranteed. I have given details to the APMM for valuation, but having read news articles and other letters about the poor performance of these "zombie" funds, I think it unlikely that there will be any takers for it.
We have started the process of surrendering the policy. Phoenix (one of Resolution's companies) have told us that legal title needs to be established before we can surrender. They want the original policy document. We have a copy given to us when we bought our property, but we are having difficulty locating the original document. We were overseas when the house was sold and the document may not have been passed on to us. I am afraid that Phoenix will try very hard to hang on to our money. A few years ago we surrendered a policy with Friends Provident, and they didn't demand so much documentation. Is this a normal practice?

dunstonh

They want the original policy document. We have a copy given to us when we bought our property, but we are having difficulty locating the original document. We were overseas when the house was sold and the document may not have been passed on to us. I am afraid that Phoenix will try very hard to hang on to our money. A few years ago we surrendered a policy with Friends Provident, and they didn't demand so much documentation. Is this a normal practice?

They are correct in asking for it. Some have removed that requirement but some still have it.

It's not a problem though. They have a lost policy document indemnity form which you can fill in and that takes care of it.