Lost endowment.

Mick_Mack

Hi all. I took out an endowment in about 1986. When I sold the house some two years later the mortgage was obviously paid off. At the time I received a letter informing me there was money in the endowment and asking if I wanted to take the money out or leave it in until a later date? We decided on the latter. I completely forgot about this money until recently, I have no idea who we even had the endowment through. How would I go about tracking it down?

AnotherJoe

Can you recall who the mortgage was with ?

TrickyDicky101

Two years in there was unlikely to have been significant value if you stopped paying the premiums into the endowment (if so, you will have made the policy 'paid up'). The ongoing costs of providing life insurance (which is a feature of the endowment policy) will have then eroded that investment value further. If this scenario is what happened (cessation of premiums in 1988) it is unlikely the policy carries any value now.

dunstonh

If the plan was made paid up within 2 years, the policy would have continued to pay the early set up fees until the money ran out. The policy would then lapse with no value.

Old_Lifer

This was 1986 so it was probably a conventional policy. House prices of course were much lower then so the mortgage and endowment would have been small by today's standards.


Because of the high start-up costs (commission, admin costs) it was usual for endowments to have no surrender value in the first year. Even at the end of the second year there would have been very little surrender value and very little paid-up value. Most policyholders given the choice of surrender or paid-up would choose surrender. After only 2 years the reduction in the sum assured on conversion to paid-up would be dramatic.



When a with-profits policy was made paid-up, I understand a few Life Offices would protect existing bonuses attaching to the policy but would convert the policy to without- profits from the alteration date. However, most Life Offices would continue to add bonuses on the reduced sum assured and where this was the case annual bonus notices would continue to be issued.




Where premiums cease under a unit-linked policy, the ongoing cost of maintaining the full life cover would usually continue to be deducted from the 'pot' each month together with any monthly standing charge. Since no more premiums are being paid, these charges steadily reduce the size of the 'pot' and in some cases the policy may simply terminate if the money runs out.


With a conventional policy, on conversion to paid -up the cover is reduced but the cost of maintaining the reduced cover is included in the calculation of the paid-up value. As a result, the paid -up value of a conventional policy does not reduce. Indeed, it may increase if bonuses continue to be added to the reduced sum assured.



If your policy was a unit-linked policy, it probably ceased without value years ago. If it was a conventional policy and if it was converted to paid-up (and not surrendered) there may be a small amount due to you.


However, as this is now over 30 years ago and you have no documentation and cannot remember the name of the Life Office, I cannot see how you will progress this at the present time.