Shared Appreciation Mortgage

GaryBC

Personally I would get hung up on the accuracy of "28%" nor on the current value. If it was a Shared Appreciation Mortgage (and I'm presuming from its location in the titular thread) it will be a Foxtrot Oscar amount of money. 

Is there no reason why the case cannot go before the Ombudsman? If, as I believe the case to be, Barclays shot themselves in the foot by offering advice; and if it can be evidenced in this case that they did, then the surely regulator has something to work with. 

MWT

GaryBC said:

Personally I would get hung up on the accuracy of "28%" nor on the current value. If it was a Shared Appreciation Mortgage (and I'm presuming from its location in the titular thread) it will be a Foxtrot Oscar amount of money.

Not getting 'hung up' on it, but but it never helps going into what is going to be a challenging debate with the lender if you start off with the wrong numbers and the associated outrage they cause... There is enough genuine reasons to be upset about these products without adding the wrong numbers...

GaryBC said:

Is there no reason why the case cannot go before the Ombudsman? If, as I believe the case to be, Barclays shot themselves in the foot by offering advice; and if it can be evidenced in this case that they did, then the surely regulator has something to work with.

No reason not to follow the process and raise a complaint with Barclays and then in due course, the Ombudsman, but the usual problem in these cases is evidencing the misselling as these products are not intrinsically faulty.

In this case that evidence is going to have to be purely documentary, and it would be an exceptional piece of luck at 25 years after the event for there to be anything in writing that would meet the standard, but certainly worth a try as there is a lot at stake.

I don't think there have actually been any successful outcomes from the Ombudsman in relation to direct sold Barclays SAM cases though, hence the group action in court. 

The Ombudsman has usually failed to uphold cases relating to SAM products bought from the bank (there have been a few successes if the product was sold by a independent advisor though I believe).

The key reason to deny complaints against the bank is that the paperwork fully disclosed the 75% clause, leaving little room for a complaint based on the 75% clause...

GaryBC

The reason the Ombudsman fails is that the lender isn't the bank and the lender is not signed up to the FCA. The bank acts as agent - no more. That's why, if there is evidence anywhere that the bank offered advice (ie "banking services"), then the regulator has something to enforce. 
Not forgetting also that the onus is on the bank to prove that the SAM was not missold, it is not on the customer to prove that it was.

And I'm sorry but once a charge becomes obscenely high, how many multiples of 'obscene' fail to have any relevance!

MWT

GaryBC said:

The reason the Ombudsman fails is that the lender isn't the bank and the lender is not signed up to the FCA. The bank acts as agent - no more. That's why, if there is evidence anywhere that the bank offered advice (ie "banking services"), then the regulator has something to enforce. 
Not forgetting also that the onus is on the bank to prove that the SAM was not missold, it is not on the customer to prove that it was.

I would suggest that the OP reads the decision from the Ombudsman in 2020 shown here:

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decisions-case-studies/ombudsman-decisions

This covers all of your points and more...

Unless there is clear documentary evidence that advice was given, I don't see anything materially different being obtained as an outcome, that is going to have to come from the records the OP has at hand, this is not something the bank is obliged to prove in the negative...

The OP might also consider if advice was given by the solicitor that would have been involved at the time, and perhaps there might be some paperwork if advice was sought from an independent financial advisor...

I do fully understand that it comes as a nasty shock to the beneficiaries of the Estate that the vast majority of the value of the house is going to go to the bank, but there may be very good reasons why the loan was taken at that time, and the evidence provided by Barclays in previous cases shows that the potential was there for the APR to be high if house prices went up significantly, the impact was not hidden.

GaryBC

I refer to my exact words "... if there is evidence...".