Prudential & Friends Provident With Profit Bonds

Primrose

I have a "With Profit" Bond with Prudential and another with Friends Provident, both of which which I have held for several years. The Friends Provident Bond is currently subject to a MVR reduction and I have read in the press that there is talk of Prudential being broken up.
Does anybody know when the Friends Provident MVR might be lifted and can anybody advise whether these bonds are likely to remain a good investment or whether I should be thinking of cashing them in and putting them in a High Interest savings account.

tom188

i dont think you could say either of them are good investments nor could one have said so for some time. Why are you only considering moving them to a savings account - you hold these investments now, have you not thought about moving them to another investment product?

dunstonh

There is a lot of talk in the press of a number of insurance companies being bought and broken up. Pru, Standard Life and Friends Prov are all at risk of that occuring.

can anybody advise whether these bonds are likely to remain a good investment

The FP bond isnt making you any money or losing money. It is just a wrapper (a container) for investment funds. It has all the major funds you would expect as well as some of it's highly regarded internal funds. If you switched into some of the other funds you would take a hit on the MVR but it would be like taking one step back to allow you to go two steps forward. There is no reason to surrender the bond but a review of the funds would be sensible.

i dont think you could say either of them are good investments nor could one have said so for some time.

FP with profits isnt but Pru's with profits is strong. The last few I still have running on my agency are averaging double digit returns. Pru and NU are really exceptions to the with profits problems.

EdInvestor

Have you checked whether you can exit the bond on an anniversary date ( usually 5 or 10 years), penalty free?

Also, if you have not been taking 5% capital withdrawal p.a. you can take that now without penalty, for every year going back to the start.