penny policy

Malkin31

Looking for advice on a whole of life penny policy my dad had , he recently passed and I am sorting his estate. the policy said in a payment book that it was fully paid till 2030 , however just received a letter telling me that the policy hasn't been paid since 2016 . They are telling me that the 2030 is when the policy would be fully paid up not that he has paid up till then. Even I found this misleading as I thought it was paid till 2030. Can I complain about this and basically as this has now apparently turned in to a free policy which has been running for over 60 years all the return on it , is basically what was paid in and no interest is this right that no benefits to this policy what so ever ?

dunstonh

Sorry for your loss.

 however just received a letter telling me that the policy hasn't been paid since 2016 . They are telling me that the 2030 is when the policy would be fully paid up not that he has paid up till then. 

That suggests that the whole of life assurance would require premiums to be paid until 2030 and then after that, the benefits would be retained but would not require premiums to be paid.  A lot of whole of life assurance plans had a cut off for premium paying between age 80-90.

Can I complain about this 

You can complain about whatever you like.  However, at the moment, it may be better to get an understanding of what he had.

Your wording is open to interpretation and could mean different things.   However, one of the things it is steering to is that whilst it was set up to have premiums until 2030, they ceased being paid in 2016.  At that time, the policy would either be made paid up and the value retained or surrendered and paid out (if it was with value - any reference to With Profits?).  If it was without value, then the policy would lapse.

is basically what was paid in and no interest is this right that no benefits to this policy what so ever ?

If it is a plan without value then that would be the outcome.   If it is a plan with value, then it would either still have a value or it would have paid the surrender value out in 2016.

Alternatively, some plans with very tiny premiums had their premium cut off waived early as the amounts were just so low that it was no longer viable to collect them.

Malkin31

Thank you for your advice .  I was just concerned as the payment book does make it seem as though it was paid up till 2030 so misleading really .

Sandtree

Without seeing the book its clearly hard to tell how confusing the wording/layout etc is but as already advised it should be indicating that it would become paid up in 2030