Help! Has my elderly mother been mis sold mortgage insurance?

dunstonh

she could ask L&G to refund the premiums made since the mortgage was paid off as there was no insurable interest.

The time that matters is at point of sale. Not later on.

The reason behind my thinking is that when people inadvertently take out two policies on the same thing, eg house or car, they can normally get a refund on one of them as they have proof that they were insured elsewhere.

Doesnt apply to life assurance as you can have as many plans as you like. Indeed, most people do have multiple plans as a matter of course. Car and household requires just one policy per house/car. So, dual insurance cant apply.

The running on of life assurance after the mortgage is repaid early is very common. It is a choice the individual can make. Especially for those in their 50s who may feel getting replacement life cover is going to be difficult or expensive.

All she can really do is ask the question to L&G and see how they respond. You wouldnt expect a refund as there is no wrong doing (What if they had cancelled without permission, then she had died - would the OP then be complaining they are missing out on a life assurance payment because they cancelled without permission?). However if you dont ask, you dont get and there is the chance of getting lucky.

luci

Thanks for the clarification.

This thread made me look out our 13 year old level term policies last night just to make sure that they would still pay out seeing as the mortgage was paid off more than 3 years ago. I was happy to find they would.

What normally happens at the end of the term, does the insurer write to say it has ended or do they sometimes offer to extend the term on payment of revised premiums?

Apologies for being off topic, Re dual insurance, is it OK to have more than one annual travel insurance policy?

Our Nationwide one won't pay out if a Close Relative has been in hospital in the previous 12 months so I took out one that would. I have been assuming that if I had a claim under those circumstances then it shouldn't be a problem as the event wouldn't be covered by Nationwide. However there amy be split liability for something else that is covered under both policies.

2sides2everystory

dunstonh wrote: »

The person you have thanked is on my ignore list for post trolling. However, reading your quoted text, I can see he/she hasnt changed. Look at the other posts and you see a trend of consistent information.

You are NOT on my ignore list dunstonh because your posts vary from very useful to downright unhelpful to genuine complainants. So every now and then I catch what you say and I return to give the other side of the story where yours is biased.

Whilst I accept you are very knowledgeable in some areas, you are not an expert in all financial services matters, and you certainly have no skill in recalling matters relating to the history of your industry and how policies still running ended up being sold and resold. Yet you have inhabited these forums masquerading as some kind of judge and jury on all manner of insurances and pensions as it suits your mood. You started your career in a bank probably selling mortgages. That was a long time ago. You probably have forgotten most of your original sales. How many of them have products still running that they don't understand?

Thesedays you are especially a master at allowing that seller organisations may abdicate responsibility by internal re-organisation/name change/ sale of the business and all manner of devices which are all moves designed by untrustworthy corporates to absolve them from risks building on the horizon.

Nationwide arranged the mortgage. Nationwide did half a job of cancelling it by not giving any kind of robust advice about what to do with the decreasing term insurance other than a fob off that saved them the job of contacting a head office department or an outside office (L&G) to cancel it. In this case L&G are completely the wrong people to hit hard about this complaint or at all.

If the insurance in question was a decreasing term assurance then indeed there would be no money back for cancelling it, but by your posts on this thread you have obfuscated the fact that from the date of the mortgage cancellation the premium paid for the Decreasing Term Insurance was almost certainly inappropriate and the advice/rationale was certainly not documented in any fashion that got through to the policyholder was it?

From that date, the OP's mother did not need the unqualified life assurance advisor at Nationwide to put a finger in the air and say "You may as well keep it going". The net effect of that is that she has since then been labouring under the misapprehension that she had some kind of sensible life insurance in force.

What she needed in 2004 was a qualified advisor at Nationwide who could review her life insurance requirements and then advise on her new situation. Of course such a person probably by then did not exist so she effectively was mis-sold the continuation of a policy which was originally sold for one reason on the strength of a p`ss poor piece of advice to continue it for an unquantified reason.

You remaining industry practitioners want it every which way. You want to abdicate as in this case a piece of long term business like decreasing term life assurance the moment it is sold more or less because it means nothing or very little to you or the seller as a piece of commission earning business. For this reason such an item was still be running long after it outran its usefulness. Yet you just as easily call other long term business you or other sellers sell 'obsolete' as a wise after the event comment when it suits you to suggest the customer should have sought a review sooner.

And why are you propounding a myth that life assurance for over 50s has to be expensive? The first 120 year old Briton is probably already aged 70 we were told this week. You want that one both ways too on behalf of your industry?

You make me sick.

2sides2everystory

luci wrote: »

Apologies for being off topic, Re dual insurance, is it OK to have more than one annual travel insurance policy?

Our Nationwide one won't pay out if a Close Relative has been in hospital in the previous 12 months so I took out one that would. I have been assuming that if I had a claim under those circumstances then it shouldn't be a problem as the event wouldn't be covered by Nationwide. However there amy be split liability for something else that is covered under both policies.

Hi luci, yes it is headed a bit off topic but then it is no deeper in the long grass than where others have kicked the thread.

There is nothing preventing you having two annual travel policies - at one point last year I think I had three via three different banks who actually are the last people who can tell you how it works but who have largely cornered the market.

In fact, a travel insurance policy, like a home insurance contract, is a mishmash of separate classes of insurance combined into one contract. There will be elements of the cover where naturally it would not be right to try to make two or more claims and expect to be paid twice - for example the baggage section or the medical expenses or the cancellation sections. These things only need to be paid once to "indemnify" you (i.e. put you back in the financial position you were in prior to what happened to cause the loss). Having said that, even if you did have two baggage insurances, the self-insured excesses (the first bit of the claim that the insurer deducts for no other reason than to put you off claiming) might be different, and the limits per item too, and who knows how that would play out between two different insurer claims departments especially when outsourced clowns are involved.

You have mentioned that indeed you do see one of your policies as the only one that would pay out in the case of a what I assume is the "Cancellation or Curtailment" part of your travel insurance protections. I glean from your post that you do indeed have a close relative recently in hospital who may or probably will not be travelling with you but whom you know may become a valid reason for you to cancel or curtail a future trip? If you can be confident that the second policy WILL cover such an eventuality that's great but if you have judged it yourself from the wording and haven't sought advice I would be extra careful about relying on your conclusion, not because of the existence of the second policy but because it could perhaps be used against you if you have somehow failed to disclose a material fact i.e. one which would have affected whether they let you have the policy at the price or at all.

Many people have an element of dual cover anyway because the "personal possessions" or "all risks" extensions on a sensibly arranged home contents insurance would overlap with travel baggage insurance.

Almost all insurers especially travel insurance insurers have devised terms in their contracts that deal one way or another with dual insurance. Some go further than demanding that you disclose it upon making a claim.

Some may even exclude completely any claim covered by another insurance thereby not even accepting what otherwise might be considered "their fair share".

However, when it comes to life assurance and lump sum payments following injury and disablement there are no set limits, so until you go delving deep into each insurers wording to find their cop-out clauses, you (or those left behind!) might possibly get paid by more than one insurer.

The way I look at it, my multiple travel insurances cost me relatively little (I and my family travel a lot) and when a claim occurs I am in a good position to decide how to pursue it because of my insurance background.

In your case, you may need some help before you need to claim and test your DIY plans. That's help which is getting harder to find these days. There's two ways to go:

1. There are I think still some specialist travel insurance brokers around. I can't guarantee they can help with cast iron guarantees about what will happen when close relatives get ill but two that I once (20 years ago) knew well that Google says are still in business are Campbell Irvine and P J Hayman. I imagine that they are still at least part controlled by the highly principled individuals I knew since their names are still part of their companies' names.
2. The other way is to contact the insurer you expect to pay before the claim happens and see if you can get advice in writing - that is probably a minefield because typically what happens now is that you have a conversation with someone who reassures you and then they write something completely ambiguous or even opposite to what they told you.

Good luck!

jonesMUFCforever

I am with Dunstoh on this.
IMO the only way that policy was linked to the mortgage if it was quoted on the policy itself and the lender had an interest noted on it.
Putting an interest on policies was quite common until the mid 80's basically to alert an interested party if the policyholders failed to pay the premiums or tried to cancel the policies.

From what I have read OP has a life policy.

starrystarry

2sides2everystory wrote: »

You make me sick.

Well that's more than just a little bit OTT don't you think? You're perilously close to being the first person I've ever bothered to put on my ignore list.

Your post above leaps to so many conclusions it's bordering on the ridiculous. We've only had one side of the story remember.

2sides2everystory

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

I am with Dunstoh on this.
IMO the only way that policy was linked to the mortgage if it was quoted on the policy itself and the lender had an interest noted on it.
Putting an interest on policies was quite common until the mid 80's basically to alert an interested party if the policyholders failed to pay the premiums or tried to cancel the policies.

From what I have read OP has a life policy.

No-one has implied the OPs policy was not a life policy.

It was almost certainly a decreasing term assurance probably with a modest monthly premium but nevertheless one that reflected the heavier term assurance rates that still applied in 1998 when the mortgage started. Ten years later, because of increased competition and reduced mortality statistics, proper term insurance would have been worth considering if there was a continuing need irrespective of the increase in age.

We don't know whether it was fifteen quid a month or fifty, but either way, just like PPI where all the industry defences to keeping the things sold have been swept aside, it is clear that the insured person didn't know what they were still paying for or why. It doesn't matter that it would have paid out something if she had died. Many PPI policies that have been fully refunded could have paid out "something" too. The whole question is not one of the technicalities of "what if" but of the complete lack of care and review after the original product was sold and even at the point the main part of the mortgage service was cancelled.

Dunstonh has not bothered to tackle the question of what sort of advice and review the OP's mother deserved when she visited Nationwide to cancel her mortgage. So do you go with the gaps in that ?

2sides2everystory

starrystarry wrote: »

Well that's more than just a little bit OTT don't you think? You're perilously close to being the first person I've ever bothered to put on my ignore list.

Your post above leaps to so many conclusions it's bordering on the ridiculous. We've only had one side of the story remember.

That side of the story was the story of a punter versus a bank (you can argue the semantics of "bank" versus the Nationwide entity if you wish but for the purposes of the thread they're the same).

Banks in case you have missed it are crooked. Life assurance companies are in league with them. Fiuancial Advisors are in league with life assurance companies. Perhaps you think that's another OTT observation?

By all means list the conclusions I have leapt to which you think are not valid conclusions, else if you wish to put me on your ignore list that's fine - I've never wished to be read by anyone who doesn't wish to read me. However, if I get called a "troll" then the person responsible had better be prepared for a candid response.

starrystarry

2sides2everystory wrote: »

That side of the story was the story of a punter versus a bank (you can argue the semantics of "bank" versus the Nationwide entity if you wish but for the purposes of the thread they're the same).

Banks in case you have missed it are crooked. Life assurance companies are in league with them. Fiuancial Advisors are in league with life assurance companies. Perhaps you think that's another OTT observation?

By all means list the conclusions I have leapt to which you think are not valid conclusions, else if you wish to put me on your ignore list that's fine - I've never wished to be read by anyone who doesn't wish to read me. However, if I get called a "troll" then the person responsible had better be prepared for a candid response.

Are we supposed to be scared by that threat? Frankly I can't be bothered to respond to each of points you made in your rather lengthy post. Suffice to say, yours is possibly the most ironic user name on this forum.

2sides2everystory

starrystarry wrote: »

Are we supposed to be scared by that threat?

You mean an assurance of a candid response if someone calls me a troll?? What on earth do you mean by scared?

Frankly I can't be bothered to respond to each of points you made in your rather lengthy post.

Financial services is a lengthy business. Would you prefer the lengthy stuff to remain hidden in the small print ready to disappoint you, or in your face while you still have a chance to walk away?

Suffice to say, yours is possibly the most ironic user name on this forum.

Irony is good, and so is a different take on things. "Financial services" as a tag for an entire industry is equally ironic if you like. At least disappointments in my textual output are not insiduous.