Nowhere to turn

Ellie55_2

I have gone as far as I can with trying to get the shortfall in my endowment sorted. The broker has gone out of business, finally, after putting it all in his wifes name first, and I am just short of one month outside the government compensation scheme.
My shortfall stands at 22 thousand at the moment, and I have no where else to try as far as I know. The solicitors I have contacted say they cannot help as I have already done the work myself.
Does anyone know of anything else I can do/anywhere to go? Or do I just have to hand over my keys in five years, after having paid the mortgage (at great sacrifice sometimes) for 25 years!

dunstonh

Does anyone know of anything else I can do/anywhere to go?

As you signed the application before Aug 1988, you havent got the FSCS protection. That makes it end of the road.

Your best option is to get the endowment reviewed and check it's ongoing suitability. Some endomwents showing shortfall projections are not actually in a shortfall position and others may not have quite a big a gap as you think and making a switch to repayment with some years to go may not make as much of a dent in the monthly payments as you think.

Who is the endowment with? Give us some details.

EdInvestor

Post the following info about the endowment:

provider
guaranteed sum assured
declared bonuses
surrender value
monthly premium
maturity date
maturity forecasts

interest rate payable on mortgage

Ellie55_2

Thanks for the interest EdInvestor. I will supply all the info requested as soon as I get it.

Ellie

mrsmoneypenny9

I was in a similar situation, my endowment was taken out in april 1988, and i got a standard letter from the fscs stating that because of the date there was nothing they could do, so I contacted the Financial Ombudsman by phone and explained my situation, they agreed to act for me and acted as go between, between me and Abbey National who had arranged my endowment with Standard Life.


They succeeded in getting Abbey to settle my complaint and I recieved a cheque which with the value of my endowment put me in the same position i would have been in had I taken out a repayment mortage. I paid this off my mortgage and changed my mortgage to part interest only (the minimum amount payable at the end of the term) and the balance to repayment. This meant my payments went up, but it did mean that I was back in control anmd that my mortage would be cleared at the end of my term

I hope this is useful to you, you can find the contact info on www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk

dunstonh

Abbey should never have rejected it in the first place. Thats probably why the FOS intervened.

mrsmoneypenny9

well i dont know about that because the original mortgage and endowment was sold to us via National & Provincial BS, who later were taken over by Abbey National. But i think its worth a try as You have nothing more to lose.

dunstonh

But i think its worth a try as You have nothing more to lose.

Its not though. The OP here used a broker that is no longer in business. You used a tied agent through a building society who shouldn't have rejected the complaint in the first place. There is a different regulatory position with those two cases. The FOS have no jurisdiction against a firm that no longer exists.

mrsmoneypenny9

OK i did not realise that, goin off the sunject slightly, and this is directed at dunstonh, my endowment is with stabdard life, its cash in value is 17700, its meant to cover 37.5k mortgage, but all the figures show an exoected shortfall. I am in a position to pay off my mortgage using savings and by cashin in the policy but i cant weigh up the best thing to do. Is it worth keeping hold of it, it has improved greatly over the last 2 years and has another 6 to run. I would appreciate your opinion as a ifa.

dunstonh

Have you spotted the other couple of threads on standard life we have been "debating" on over the last few days. There is a lot of good info in there from a few of the regs to give you an idea of the standard life position.

Some of the SL policies are coming good and paying surpluses again. Others are still off track but have mortgage promise values or good final bonuses (neither of which are included in the projections).

Rather than pinch Ellie's thread, if you want to take a read of the SL threads and then post your SL details on a new thread, Ed and I can debate the pros and cons of yours and hopefully you will end up with a better idea of where you stand.