miss sold endowment who do we complain to ?

chrispbug

:huh::hello:Please be patience with us this is our first post .Who do we send our mis sold endowment complaint letter to? Is it our endowment company ?I am sure we are being a bit thick about this can anybody help please?

dunstonh

Leaving it a bit late now as many now find themselves timebarred. However, if you are not time barred then you put your complaint to the company that gave you the advice.

magpiecottage

In theory whoever was responsible for the sale but if you complain to the insurance company they are obliged to pass it on to the firm responsible if it is not them (and the firm still exists).

There are three things that the evidence must indicate are more likely than not to be true for you to get compensation:

1. That the adviser failed to meet the regulatory standards in place at the time (which may be different from what they are now).
2. That you have suffered a loss
3. That the loss was, at least in part, the result of the failure on the part of the adviser.

You do not necessarily need all the evidence yourself to prove your case and the requirement is the balance of probabilities (i.e. more likely than not), rather than beyond all reasonable doubt but English (and Scottish) law operates on the principle that "he who asserts must prove".

A couple of points with the Which? letter:

1. If you say no "Fact Find" was completed, you are laying yourself open to being accused of lying if there is one on file. At the very least, you will have undermined your credibility
2. Saying the adviser told you the policy was guaranteed to pay off the mortgage or that there will be a surplus is unlikely to get you very far unless there is evidence of it.
3. If you were advised before the end of 1994, then a complaint that no other mortgage repayment methods were discussed will not work because the regulator did not require it. Similarly, there was no need to record "attitude to risk" before about 1991.

dunstonh

If you say no "Fact Find" was completed, you are laying yourself open to being accused of lying if there is one on file. At the very least, you will have undermined your credibility

Thats a good point. In grey areas where no proof either way can be obtained, a balance of probabilities decision will need to be made and if you have been found to lie in your complaint, the decision in grey areas is likely to go against you. That does work both ways though.

There has been a lot of coverage in the media recently following some high profile admissions that the pensions review and endowment review was flawed in favour of the consumer where they were encouraged to have selective memory and lie.

EdInvestor

Complain in the first instance to the endowmewnt provider, they will pass the complaint on if it wasn't them.

Which has a good guide at https://www.which.net

Keep it all very simple, most people's complaints succeed because the salesman failed to take into account attitude to risk - or there is no documentation that he did because the files are missing.

Most people wouldn't have taken out endowment mortgages if they thought there was any risk that they wouldn't pay off the mortgage and this was often not made clear at the time.
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