Upheld endowment appeal

rosie56

I have had an endowment misselling complaint upheld but the calculations given were difficult to understand and the upshot is that I am considered to be no worse off than if I had stayed with a repayment mortgage and so will get no compensation. Was advised that could appeal to Financial Services.. but a waste of time as they had calculated the figures under financial services regulations.

I wondered whether anyone had appealed and been successful but also appreciate every case is different.

dunstonh

If the figures input are correct then appealing to the FOS will be a waste of time. It is becoming more common nowadays, as many endowments recover, to see little or no redress payable and be told you are better off.

Not all endowments are bad. Indeed, we had someone post earlier that theirs is maturing shortly with a nice surplus on it.

You should be happy that the adviser that you complained about has made you financially better off and you have an endowment that has given you good value.

defender_of_the_weak

Is the calculation from a big company or broker, big companies make errors and some brokers lie, come to think of it some big companies lie as well. They should have sent a summary of the calculation called mortgage fundamentals and on there you should be able to pick out the basics of the calc such as amount, term, lender etc. Particularly look for changes of lender where the term gets reset back to 25 years, thereby minimising the loss dramatically.

If you are still unsure PM your details and I will check it for you

JoeK_3

defender_of_the_weak wrote: »

If you are still unsure PM your details and I will check it for you

What a nice gesture!

Claims for endowment mis-selling are based on people being financially dis-advantaged and loosing money as a result of bad advice.

Once you have checked that your calculations have been made correctly, thanks your lucky stars that you are not one of those unfortunate people who have £0,000 to make up on their mortgages.

JoeK

rosie56

Thanks for replies, particularly kind offer from defender of the week.

What I didnt mention is that we are still predicted a shortfall even though they say we are better off by £256!

I think our insurance company has one of the worst records for paying bonuses....

dunstonh

What I didnt mention is that we are still predicted a shortfall even though they say we are better off by £256!

It isnt a prediction. It is a projection. A projection is an example only. You could get more or less than that. Projections can be very unreliable and can understate as well as overstate. For example, until recently, Standard life projections at 4% used to project to a value than the current minimum maturity.

Endowment mortgages are typically cheaper than repayment mortgages. That is taken into account.

Surrender penalty can make a big difference as well. A good endowment with a big surrender penalty can give a higher redress than a bad endowment with a low surrender penalty.

vinno65

dunstonh wrote: »

You should be happy that the adviser that you complained about has made you financially better off and you have an endowment that has given you good value.

Now now Dunstonh. Not strictly true. The fact that she is not financially worse off does not make the endowment "good value". And who knows what would happen if the endowment was left to mature. Another stock market crash in the meantime and it might well shortfall.
Would you still be praising the advisor for his stirling work?

regards Vinno

dunstonh

Another stock market crash in the meantime and it might well shortfall.
Would you still be praising the advisor for his stirling work?

We dont know how it's invested. It may not have a high stockmarket content. The adviser may have built a spread of funds into the endowment.

The target growth rate could be low which again, a good adviser would have done.

There could be a long time left and in which case, a stockmarket crash in the earlier years is a good thing as you spend a number of years buying your units much cheaper and these will make the most when the market recovers.

It could be luck, it could be judgement but the OP is not financially worse off. Yet, the adviser still had to deal with a complaint on their record even though there is no loss.

vinno65

dunstonh wrote: »

It could be luck, it could be judgement but the OP is not financially worse off. Yet, the adviser still had to deal with a complaint on their record even though there is no loss.

Hi Dunstonh, why did he deal with the complaint? Maybe because there was a complaint to answer? As you know you can not complain just because an endowment is under performing so your statement above does not make sense. If the complaint was about attitude to risk and not having an endowment explained at the point of sale then it is a valid. Rosie may not be prepared to risk her mortgage on an endowment so the fact that there has been no loss up to this point is neither here nor there as there is the potential for loss in the future.

At least now if Rosie converts to a repayment mortgage she will have the peace of mind of knowing that so long as she keeps up the repayments the mortgage will be paid off at term and not subject to the vagaries of the economy.

Regards Vinno

dunstonh

As you know you can not complain just because an endowment is under performing so your statement above does not make sense.

You can complain about anything. Maybe you didnt like the colour of the advisers tie. Obviously the response wont result in anything but it will still be dealt with the same way.

Maybe risk wasnt right, maybe it was. However, the op seems disappointed that the policy sold to her is doing the job it was meant to and that she isnt getting any compensation.

rosie56

The fact is I am not an expert on financial matters. We were encouraged by a very nice financial adviser (surprised by the flippant comment about his tie) to change a repayment mortgage to an endowment - the enticement being that not only would we pay off our mortgage but that we would be paid a bonus in the region of £10,000 which would coincide with planned retirement. This was 24 years ago and I absolutely accept that he genuinely believed this would be the case at that time. There was never any question that there might not be enough money to pay off the mortage. The endowment finishes next year and there wont be.

If there had been the slightest mention at that time that this would be the case we wouldnt have taken an endowment policy so I believe it was missold.