Endowment Mis-selling - Don't give up!

bill_3-2

Got a letter today from Insurance company today saying my complaint would take 4 weeks to consider. Which is strange as I have not complained to them I complained to the Building Society who sold me the Endowment in the first place.
Bill

peterbaker

dunstonh wrote:

in 1987 endowment mortgages would have been cheaper than repayment mortgages....and that is why no redress is due.

With respect dh, this is a bit of a generalisation and it doesn't fit my experience.

I have said before in these pages that I secured nearly £10,000 compensation on a group of four Royal Life policies all sold before 1988. The £50,000 policy I bought in December 1987 was the worst performing of the lot. Royal Life was still one of the largest endowment providers in 1987 so I would suggest my experience is significantly more indicative than your generalisation. What say?

peterbaker

bill wrote:

Got a letter today from Insurance company today saying my complaint would take 4 weeks to consider. Which is strange as I have not complained to them I complained to the Building Society who sold me the Endowment in the first place.
Bill

Bill, don't be too concerned just yet - you might be better off being treated as a direct sale as opposed to via building society as an agent.

During the eighties, local building society managers acted more or less just as introducers to their favorite insurance company reps. It was a proper little production line at one stage, with the BS manager including a little spiel and a bit of paperwork in his mortgage sale one afternoon with the insurance company rep receiving a slip of paper telling him to call the customer next day to make an evening appointment to do the "Endowments work best" presentation. The BS manager was on an "override commission" for all such endowments sold.

Something in the back of my head says there may even have been a rate differential on the mortgage loan (cheaper rate if you took an endowment??) just to keep it looking best! It was all pretty incestuous for a while.

Bide your time, and if the complaint direct with the endowment company doesn't shell out as you want, then you can try plan B. You shouldn't have to wait long for things to happen now. The FSA have shaken things up pretty good these last few months.

dunstonh

peterbaker wrote:

With respect dh, this is a bit of a generalisation and it doesn't fit my experience.

I have said before in these pages that I secured nearly £10,000 compensation on a group of four Royal Life policies all sold before 1988. The £50,000 policy I bought in December 1987 was the worst performing of the lot. Royal Life was still one of the largest endowment providers in 1987 so I would suggest my experience is significantly more indicative than your generalisation. What say?

OK, I never sold any Royal Life endowments but my experience at the time was that comparisons between endowment and interest only and capital repayment with life cover nearly always showed endowment mortgage being cheaper. This carried on up until around 1996/7ish when it swung the other way. I would suggest my experience from 1988 onwards trumps your 4 endowments from one provider. However, you are suggesting 1987 which was a year before i started. The cycle may have been in the reverse at that point.

Don't know where you live but house prices in my area were cheap and most mortgages were around or below the Miras threshold. That tended to favour endowment mortgages more.

An endowment could cost £40 with one company and £80 with another. I can only work on the basis that I was not getting quotes from the £80 one

bill_3-2

Thanks Peterbaker,
It all seems to have gone quiet at the minute. The BS is saying it has to get permission from others involved in the mortgage,whoever they are before they can let me have a copy of my Endowment file which I requested a few weeeks back.
bill

donnie_darko_3

Just had my statement

Shortfall on 38K endowment could be as much as 18k

My early maturity over the last twelve months has gone down, is this possible it went from 12.4k last feb to 12.2k this feb having paid in £619 over the last tweleve months.

The mortgage was from halifax and the endowment through a House and Mortgage centre back in 1990 though they were a member of FIMBRA it was a "low cost minimum cost plan (80) I cant remember if Halifax recomended them or whether they recommended the halifax.

The policy was £51.64 month for a £38,950 mortgage.

Does anyone think I will have achance of compensation based on the above. I have remortgaged on a repayment "courtesy of advice on this site" so my endowment is now a savings plan but I still feel aggrieved about such a large shortfall.

Beck_2-2

i came across a company called 1stendowment.com in the mirror about a month ago apparently they were one of the cheapest claims companies?

I called them and they have taken my claim onboard and said i had a good chance of success, they showed me that i could have complained myself but after reading the which artical etc i was still confused.

They also have an affiliation "I think" with a company called life agency who quoted me on life insurance which seemed not to bad on price also.

But dont take my word for it, their website for the endowments is at https://www.1stendowment.com

sorry to see other people in the same boat as me

dunstonh

Total waste of money using a compensation company. Just use the which template and be done with it. You will not get any extra by using a third party. In fact, you get less because of what they take.

Beck_2-2

i wish it was that easy

i spoke to the claims company and i was reassured by the advisor that they was so experienced that they had more chance of getting the claim upheld.

I was sold their service because I did a bit of digging myslef and found that the main person behind the claims company used to be the main compliance officer of pearl assurance, his name is graeme kilgour or something ???

i was aware that there is a time limit regarding claiming and thought i would rather use these "experts" as i did not want to put it to chance anymore.

Now this is the crazy bit which took a little bit to sink in...i spoke to the advisor and beleive it or not he told me advisors that sold endowments in the past were advising their old clients to make a claim against them???@@@@~~~?

Then he stated that this has now become normal practice as the advisor was not really the one to blame as he was set his tarets and attended training courses setup by the life insurers who were rubbing their hands at huge commissions.

Now, I have also spoke to an advisor who the family know quite well and he told me that financial advisors had it to good for to long in the early days as they made lots of commissions on products like endowments, they worked until wednesday lunch then went on the golf course in the afternoon and that was them for the week.

So, I say what goes around comes around!

dunstonh

Beck, you have associations with this company though don't you? So in effect you are advertising their services by pretending to be a consumer.

i spoke to the claims company and i was reassured by the advisor that they was so experienced that they had more chance of getting the claim upheld.

Complete and utter rubbish. Even the FSA state that using an agency doesnt increase your chances of a claim upheld.

I was sold their service because I did a bit of digging myslef and found that the main person behind the claims company used to be the main compliance officer of pearl assurance, his name is graeme kilgour or something ???

Thats nothing to be proud of. Pearl compliance standards were awful. Their suitability letters were abysmal (standard paragraphs only and everyone seemed to want to save for a boat!) and they had a very bad stance on churning. So much so that I believe they had to enforce some heavy rules to stop their salesforce from doing it.