Friends Life - Keep Endowment?

penwise

I am not sure whether it is sensible to keep my endowment or not.

Any thoughts / opinions/ advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

I have a Friends life endowment that is due to mature on the 14th June 2015.

I pay 57 each month.
The target amount had been 40,000.
The cash in value on 30th June was 24,680
The cash in value on 1 July 2012 had been 18,919

There is life cover until the maturity date of 40,0000
(I have no dependants so the life insurance is nice but not vital)

The example figures given are :
low rate - 27,700
mid rate - 28,700
high rate - 29,800
The fund is:
FL European units - 1659 - current value 13,339
Managed units - 1470 current value 11,342

Thanks

TrickyDicky101

Do you still have the mortgage? If so, will there be a shortfall once the balance of the endowment's value is paid against it?

How much do you value certainty of outcome over the opportunity to see higher investment returns than might be obtained via bank deposit/pay down of mortgage?

penwise

Thanks for the reply TrickyDicky,

Yes I still have A mortgage and there will still be a short fall (but hopefully with other investments not much)

The cash in value grew really well over the year over 5,500 But I know this can fluctuate and am concerned it will drop soon

TrickyDicky101

It looks like you have a unitised policy which means the value will fluctutae directly with the the change in value of the underlying investments.

Hence, if markets fall, so will your policy surrender value. If markets rise, the opposite, and you make gains.

So the question is do you want to accept the risk of holding on to the units for the possibility of further gains (but also the risk of losses), or do you want the assurance of locking in what recent gains have been made by surrendering now?

That's really only something you can answer.