Endownment Claims, How Long???

moneypennyless

Hi,

We have had our endownment since 1996, we have felt for a long time now, that we were mis-sold it, but being 1st time buyers, and being told "you can pay your mortgage off early, or have a tidy little nest egg over after paying for 25yrs, we were smitten, up until we had our 1st re-projection letter, saying we were going to have a shortfall.

Anyway, we changed our mortgage to a capital repayment, in sept 2001, but continued to pay the endownment, aswell, as its worthless to cash in just yet. Last July, we heard an advert on the radio, from ECA, saying they can help you get some money back if mis-sold an endownment, so we rang up. After filling in all forms, agreeing to the no win no fee, and 20% payment to ECA if they won for us, we were knocked back. The ECA re-applied to the endownment insurance company, and again, we were knocked back. This has now gone to the financial ombudsman, for them to investigate. Our claim was submitted in November 2004, and we are still waiting. We have had a letter from ECA, saying that the Financial ombudsman had nearly completed their investiagation, but just needed to know a couple more things. We replied back immediatly, and the ECA telephoned our response back to speed thing up. This was 25th Jan 2005. On ringing back recently, I was told that the decision on whether we can have compensation could take 6 to 12 months, and that they can't hurry the ombudsman up, its that they are obviously unindated with claims.

I was just wondering, if any of you reading this (sorry its so long winded!!) have gone through this, and if so, how long did you have to wait for a decision on whether your claim was successful, and also, how long after that, did you receive your money??

Any advice is much appreciated. I just think its been going on such a long time now, at 9 months (considering, they said it would be 8 weeks) and I am also resenting ECA, for taking 20% of our winnings, should we win, for doing sod all!!

Many Thanks

Moneypennyless :rolleyes:

Liz19

We had a claim for mis-selling upheld by Standard Life a month after filling in the appropriate forms and received a cheque for compensation directly after. We had another claim for mis-selling upheld by the Halifax for a Scottish Amicable policy two months after submitting forms and am still waiting for the compensation to be calculated five months on. There does not seem to be any particular time-scale for these claims to be dealt with.

Liz19

Forgot to say, we didn't get a company to deal with the claim for mis-selling, we dealt with it ourselves. It does seem to be a bit of a rip off taking 20% for doing next to nothing.

littlereddevil

I have been waiting since Jun e 2004 and still don't know if I am going to get anything.

dunstonh

12-18 months from the ombudsman is not unusual.

And yes, these rip off endowment claims companies are taking 20% just for writing a letter which you can get free from the which? website.

mpet

It took over a year to settle my claim (which I won). However this was through the FSA as the Financila Adviser that originally sold us the policy had goneout of business

mpet

gobananas5

Not every company charges 20% for the which letter. No you may not get the same result. If you lose your case what then! 70% of all complaints are upheld first time by the company concerned so if you want to, try that first the odds are with you. If you lose then maybe look for a company to help unless you have a friendly adviser/bank manager/solicitor/relative who will help don't pay more than the which recommended rate of 15% including VAT of the amount you may win on a no win no fee basis

dinglebert

It took me 2 years from begining to nearly end (currently waiting for offer from company after the fsa plumped for me).

moneypennyless

Hi again,
Thankyou for all our replies. Very much appreciated. Had I had known last july, when we rang ECA up, after hearing the radio advert, that we could have done it ourselves, then I would have gone down that route. We would still have had our claim rejected by Winterthur(our endownment company), but then could have gone on to apply to financial ombudsman ourselves. I know they do not accept claims, unless the endownment company has been approached first, who then reject the claim. At the time, we weren't sure of what was involved, and then offers of help were advertised by these "proffesionals", who you trust to do the best they can, for the fee of 20%, which, they did seem to be earning their money, early on, but now in the hands of the ombudsman they can't do anything other than wait. Seems silly that I will be (if I win!!) be paying that silly amount for them to be sitting and waiting!!

Oh well, guess I had better forget about it and hope eventually I get something out of this.
Many Thanks
Moneypennyless

moneypennyless

Update: Well, after writing the above in april, I contacted the ECA company who are acting on my behalf for the compensation, in september to see how progress was going, and 2 days later I received a letter saying the financial ombudsman had found in favour of us and we were to sign the acceptance forms to say we would not claim again, once this had been settled. These we sent straight back, which was nearly 12 weeks ago!! We are still waiting for them to calculate the compensation amount due to us. We actually received a copy of the letter the ombudsman had written to ECA, though I had to hound them for it, and the ombudsman actually sent them the letter in july, saying that we are to receive compensation, and if they do not here from us within 2 weeks from the date on the letter, they would presume we are happy with the settlement figue and the file will be closed. We received this copy in september, 2 months later, and nearly 3 months on from that, still no idea of the amount we are due.

Absolute farce!! I do hope this will be worth it in the end, I so could do with that money now, just before christmas, but thats after ECA have taken their wad of 20% first!!

dunstonh

As it happens, that delay has allowed the stockmarket to recover a fair amount and your surrender value is likely to be a lot higher than it was 12 months ago. This means any compensation due will be much lower than it would have been at the start of the claim.