Endowment Mis-selling - Don't give up!

bill_3-2

froggitt,
thanks for that we def was not told that we would loose money.
It's taken 4 years for my wife to accept that there will be a shortfall as the bloke who sold us it was the Chairman of the Building society.

dunstonh

thanks for that we def was not told that we would loose money.

I don't think anyone was told they would lose money. You need to have been made aware or to have accepted the potential for loss.

If the documentation supplied makes the potential for loss apparant, then you have less chance of winning your case. Its the documentation that is really important as it will be your word against the person that sold it. You say you werent, they will say you were. The documentation cannot lie.

shrek101

They didnt in my case the onus was on the endownment company to prove otherwise.

Froggitt wrote:

To win a claim, you will need to show you were missold......eg you were told it would pay off your mortgage, you would be retired by the time it matured, you had low attitude to the risk of the stockmarket.....not just that you have a shortfall.

dunstonh

They didnt in my case the onus was on the endownment company to prove otherwise.

That is true. The company has to provide the documentation that details the risk. If they cannot do that, then it is unlikely they have grounds to refuse.

There is a saying in financial services advice today that says that if it isnt on paper, it didnt happen.

If the reason why letter (as it was called then) says that there is risk involved or will only pay of the mortgage if the endowment grows by x%pa, then that is considered adequate documentation. If the reason why letter makes no reference to risk, then they have let themselves open to complaint.

The further back you go in years, the less detailed these letters were and the more likely things were not documented as well as they should have been.

Sofa_Sogood

This is going to seem like another of my dumb questions but here goes ...

How do people know if there'll be a shortfall? Have they been told by post or something? I'm only asking because my husband thinks on one endowment, there might be a shortfall, so at the risk of seeming even dumber ... how do we find out?

shrek101

Yes I got notified by the endowment company it was about 2-3 years ago, then took my a year or so to get to the stage of getting the endowment policy surrendered and then in Jan 2004 changed to a repayment policy.

Sofa_Sogood

shrek101 wrote:

Yes I got notified by the endowment company it was about 2-3 years ago, then took my a year or so to get to the stage of getting the endowment policy surrendered and then in Jan 2004 changed to a repayment policy.

Thanks shrek. I'll ask him to go through all the files again. He has a habit of filing work things at home and home things at work.

Or it might be an idea for us to actually contact them. He's sure there's a shortfall somewhere, just doesn't know where.

Thanks again.

bill_3-2

Sofa,
You will get a letter and as the time gets nearer to the end of the mortgage it will contain more RED print telling you your shortfall

bill_3-2

I have a letter from the insurance company outlining the payout and there is no sign or warning of any kind.

Sofa_Sogood

Thanks Bill.

I'll have to get all the paperwork involved together and in one place. This is no excuse, but we pay 95% of all our outgoings through a works account, so although I blame MrS, I've probably given any mail to him to sort.

We both seem to think that on at least one of our endowments, Standard Life, there's a shortfall expected. Standard Life were contacted but when asked how it was faring, we were told it should mature for £18,750 and no more. This is the exact amount that the first mortgage cost, so I presume that whilst there's no shortfall, there's no bonuses either.

Since taking that endowment out we've moved twice, so we'll have to work through those figures too. But at the back of both of our minds there's some niggling doubts creeping in. It's not a case of us looking for anything more than we've paid for by the way, it's just one of those things that's bothered us, more so since I've read all this and related it to him. We both seem to recall Standard Life painting a rosier picture than it actually is, if that makes sense.

I'll get my head out of the clouds one of these days, but in the meantime I'll gather all the correspondence together and float back down to earth, hopefully without a big bump

Thanks again.