Endowment assignment problem.

Stevienoc

My insurer is willing to pay me direct but only half at the moment because they have doubts over the identity of my ex. The insurer is willing to pay the full amount to the lender though without that identity proof but the lender doesn't seem to want to accept the money.

As I mentioned before I was just trying to save time because the longer this drags on past the maturity date of my mortgage the more interest payments the lender wants to service my unpaid debt. I find that a bit rich to say the least when, in my eyes, their negligence has caused the delay. By not informing me 22 years ago that my policy was no longer assigned to them and not returning my policy, which I will now have to try and recover from them, they caused the insurer to offer them the money first. It took them a month to write back stating no interest and a further two weeks for the insurer to generate the letter to me. All this time lost has left me with just under two weeks to have documents copied and certified and sent over from Turkey. The time lost here is time that I could have used in order to get the necessary proof of identity the insurer requires and there would be no further interest fees.

As for the insurer paying into the account they had been paid from. I was hoping that my insurer would do this. I have paid them from the joint account opened by myself and my ex 25 years ago for the purpose of paying the insurer. However, the insurer will only pay into that account after recieving proof of identity from my ex (which hopefully will be on its way from Turkey tomorrow )

The ridiculous thing to me though is that all this fuss and hassle could have been avoided if the lender had accepted the procedes of the endowment from the insurer or if the lender had informed me and the insurer that in their eyes my policy was no longer assigned to them and returned my policy 22 years ago. I'm not always the quickest to do things but even I could have sorted it out at a stroll over a 22 year period :rotfl:.

Thanks again for all of your replies. It's nice to know that there are people out there who do care .

Stevienoc

Just a quick update for anyone who may be interested or who has posted.

After numerous more telephone calls and getting nowhere fast I put in an official complaint with my lender about the handling of the end of my motgage and the endowment policy assignment.

I told them that the policy was assigned to them for 25 year despite them repeatedly denying it. I told them that they could not unassign the policy without writing to the insurer, which the insurer confirmed they had never done. Also, if they had unassigned the policy they should have informed me and returned my policy, which they never did and hence the policy was still assigned to them up until the point where they refused the procedes from the policy and declared no interest in it. I told them that the insurer was willing to still pay them the procedes if they would write back to them stating that the original refusal had been sent in error.

I stated that either they were negligent in not informing me that the policy was unassigned and returning it 22 years ago or that it was still assigned and they should have accepted the procedes. Either way, their actions were costing me exta expenses in phone bills and that the lender was expecting me to pay extra interest on my loan while a long drawn out process off getting documents copied and certified to the insurers requirements from the far side of Europe. I told them that I found that unacceptable and expected them to pay the excess on my phone bills and that I did not expect to pay any extra interest once the maturity date of the mortgage was reached. And finally...... I told them that I wanted a straight answer to why they could not or would not write to the insurer to claim the procedes from my policy and save us all a heap of grief.

Anyway, the lender contacted me yesterday and appologised for how things have been handled, offered to pay my telephone expenses and have written to the insurer to claim the procedes of my endowment policy .

So, as long as no one else throws a spanner in the works this should all be put to bed within the next couple of weeks.

I'd just like to thank anyone who has posted on this thread, it has all helped to give me a picture of how things work and also a bit on how other lenders/insurers work. So Thanks, it is much appreciated :T.

mollymoose_2

Our endowment matures on 12 Sept and we were made aware by the insurance company that it was still assigned to the Woolwich in May 2013. We needed to get them to forward a letter of disclaimer as we have re-mortgaged several times since and have had nothing to do with Woolwich since 2000. Seemed simple enough so I rang Woolwich (now part of Barclays) and was told to write to them which I did and assumed all was well until the surrender paperwork in. On 10 July I spoke to their offices in Leicester and was told that because it was an old mortgage we no longer appeared on their system so they would do it manually. Of course that didn't happen either so yesterday was spent sorting through old paperwork and hanging on the phone trying to speak to a human being. Again they couldn't trace anything but the very helpful lady I spoke to suggested that I go into a local Barclays branch so that they could ID me in order to proceed further. This was done at 9.30 this morning and I have been told now that they will get the letter organised manually by their back office team. I have backed this up with a letter to them with copies of all relevant paperwork that I can find. We ended up with Woolwich by default really as the original policy was assigned to Town & Country BS which was taken over by Woolwich in 1992 and then again Woolwich was swallowed up by Barclays.


Just a warning really here to anyone else who has a policy maturing shortly .... check your paperwork as we could now find ourselves in a position where the insurers won't pay out without the disclaimer and I hate to think of the consequences when we have to tell our current mortgage company that the funds aren't available. We are in the same property by the way.