Endowment Mis-selling - Don't give up!

caleb2003

Legal and general have wrote to me stating I have a possible £12k shortfall but they also wrote to the original financial consultants who old me the policy who have asked me to go see them to try to claim money back.

My question is should I see the financial consultants and let them probably get commission for claiming or should I go solo as per the 'which' letters?

dunstonh

My question is should I see the financial consultants and let them probably get commission for claiming or should I go solo as per the 'which' letters?

A letter can take you 10 minutes. Is that 10 minutes worth upto 25% of the compensation, if any becomes payable?

magpie

The financial ombudsman upheld our complaint against Legal & General that we were mis-sold our endowment policy as it would not pay off our mortgage. However the second part of our complaint was that we were asked to surrender our existing endowment policy at the time in favour of a new one - which we did. We cannot find the old policy number now nor any information regaring the surrender. Legal and General have said that they cannot trace our old policy as we do not have the policy number. I have been trying for months to gain some sort of information from Legal and General regarding my old policy, but seem to have hit a brick wall. I do not feel like giving up and letting them win.
Any advice please?

ghill35

Hi

been scanning through this thread over the last day or so and and as a result made some investigations as to whether I could complain about an endowment mis-sell.

I have received some red letters over the last few years and didn't pursue a complaint as people had been saying it was too late...etc. After reading the site I checked out if Barclays had a time bar but their web page states that they will give 6 months notice of any deadline on complaining. This was also stated on a BBC news page. This, and the thread, has made me want to pursue a claim asap.

Any feedback on whether the claim is likely to be upheld would be appreciated.

Summary of what has happened.

1992: first house after getting married, initially bought on a joint ownership arrangement - we own 50% the agency owning the other 50%. We got mortgage for 50% and paid rent on the remaining 50%. Eventually bought out the agency and had 100% ownership and a repayment mortgage to match. Repayment mortgage was with Halifax.

Decided to move to bigger house once the family started to grow and went to Woolwich(taken over by Barclays in recent years). Basically were sold the endowment (Woolwich Life) as we were told it would pay off the mortgage and leave a nice lump sum as well. I remeber they did ask if we had any shares - and told them we received shares from the employer's free share scheme (and likely would in the future from a sharesave scheme - save money over 5 years and then get opportunity to buy shares at a discount price - although any that we did eventually buy were sold straight away for profit). We were not investing in shares at that stage out of our own pockets.

Within the last few years we have converted some of the interest only over to repayment, as a result of the shortfall letters. We are also paying off lump sums of the interest only part.

Policy is for approx 60,000.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Paulee

My wife and I took out an endowment mortgage, we believe but we are not sure, through our building society in 1987 for 24,000 pounds. The endowment was arranged through Royal Life who have notified us, with increasingly worrying letters over the past few years, of a likely shortfall estimated at 6,700 - 8,200 pounds. We wrote to Royal Life, now known as Phoenix, in July, and suggested that we had been mis-sold their product and asked for guidence from them to enable us to claim for compensation.

They have recently relied saying that our policy was arranged by a company called Frilsons Insurance Services, that this company were our agents and because of this Phoenix were not liable. They also pointed out that because of the date we took out the policy we are unable to refer our complaint to a compensation scheme. They gave us Frilsons address and suggested that we contact them. We have never heard of Frilsons, their name does not appear on any correspondance that we have, and we are pretty sure that we are "up the creek" and will get little reward from taking this matter up with Frilsons directly.

However, Phoenix never answered our main enquiry and critisism. This was, how a reputable company of the size and experience of theirs could make such a !!!! up of investing our money, particularly given that they had 25 years in which to get it right. The investment markets have only been performing badly relatively recently. Surely, even I could manage to get a better return over a period so long as this.

Is there a case here for tackling these companies on the basis of their incompetence and their inability to safeguard their customers investments with the due diligence they had promised in their sales brochures and customer letters?

If anyone could offer me any advice I would be most grateful.

dunstonh

They gave us Frilsons address and suggested that we contact them. We have never heard of Frilsons, their name does not appear on any correspondance that we have, and we are pretty sure that we are "up the creek" and will get little reward from taking this matter up with Frilsons directly.

This company sold the policy and as its pre 1988, its extremely unlikely you will get anywhere complaining.

However, Phoenix never answered our main enquiry and critisism. This was, how a reputable company of the size and experience of theirs could make such a !!!! up of investing our money, particularly given that they had 25 years in which to get it right. The investment markets have only been performing badly relatively recently. Surely, even I could manage to get a better return over a period so long as this.

Phoenix have only been round a couple of years so they have nothing to answer to. They are active at buying failed life & pension companies (usually leaving the general insurance arm trading under the old name and previous management). They are not responsible for what happened. They are just taking advantage of it.

Is there a case here for tackling these companies on the basis of their incompetence and their inability to safeguard their customers investments with the due diligence they had promised in their sales brochures and customer letters?

None at all.

elliehenny777

I hope this inspires those of you who are still fighting for compensation.

I have just received compensation for my claim of a missold endowment from Standard Life, it is £27000! We are still in a state of shock. Up until one week before the cut off date for claims we had no idea we might be entitled to claim.

Thanks to Martin's reminder of the cutoff date being only one week away, I wrote to ST and they replied immediately. I sent in all the relevant info and more, with photocopies. Within days a very nice man rang to say that they had upheld our claim, also thanks for such detailed information. Ten days later we were told the wonderful news. We get the cheque next week. We can now pay off the mortgage and enjoy our retirement, instead of worrying about the shortfall and how to exist with the huge rises in heaing, rates etc.

Martin should be knighted for his services to the common man! He's my hero,
Ellie

dunstonh

You must have had one hell of a mortgage to get £27,000 paid out.

elliehenny777

Dunstonh
No, we have an average mortgage, the compensation is to recover the amount we should have paid off our mortgage by our retirement. Instead, due to bad advice we have a large shortfall and have topped up our payments continuously in the last few years in an effort to reduce the mortgage. This naturally made a lagre hole in our monthly income as we are now both retired (unwillingly but had no choice due to occupations) This unexpected windfall means we can pay off the mortgage and be able to spend our retirement enjoying life instead of worrying over bills.

BTW Standard Life have been more than helpful, and their financial advisor is excellent, as well as being very pleasant to deal with. They will also pay any expenses incurred in dealing with the mortgage.
Ellie

dunstonh

Well good for you. I have no problem at all with valid claims like this. I was just surprised by the amount.

Standard Life do not have any financial advisors any more. AFAIA, they do have a telephone salesforce for direct sales which is being trialled but I cant see them getting involved with endowment mis-sales.

One thing to check is that SL normally only pay upto £350 to an IFA for the cost to switch to repayment mortgage. Check the print to make sure you go to the right place and can claim that £350. I did one recently from SL and it said IFA only. If you have a local IFA, they may be willing to invoice £350 to claim the full amount but rebate a chunk of that back to you.