Norwich Union - Reattribution

alared

Norwich Union "at it again":mad:

Norwich Union has barred withdrawals from its unit-linked life and pension property fund over fears a wave of investors could pull out because of the slump in the commercial property market.

The measure means that 225,000 investors will be unable to redeem money from the fund, which has £2.9bn of assets under management, for six months:mad:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/insurance/4316635/Norwich-Union-halts-property-fund-redemptions.html

dunstonh

alared wrote: »

Norwich Union "at it again":mad:

Norwich Union has barred withdrawals from its unit-linked life and pension property fund over fears a wave of investors could pull out because of the slump in the commercial property market.

The measure means that 225,000 investors will be unable to redeem money from the fund, which has £2.9bn of assets under management, for six months:mad:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/insurance/4316635/Norwich-Union-halts-property-fund-redemptions.html

Well, you have to say well done to them for holding on as long as they did. Other insurers imposed this a long time ago.

No offence alared but do you know what the things you are posting mean and the reasons why or are you just posting anything with NU in the article?

alared

225,000 people who invested in good faith won`t be happy with this decision,which was never mentioned at the time of taking out their policies.
Their money is effectively frozen for at least six months and it could be even longer.
The pidgeons are coming home to roost on all these financial products making them very poor value and to be avoided in future.
All the mis-selling and underhand pratices doesn`t make very good reading.

dunstonh

225,000 people who invested in good faith won`t be happy with this decision,which was never mentioned at the time of taking out their policies.

First of all its a fund, not a policy and secondly the ability to do this exists with every property fund and has for as long as I remember.

Their money is effectively frozen for at least six months and it could be even longer.

Withdrawals have the ability to be suspended up to 6 months from request. That doesnt mean they will be but most will. That is pretty much in line with other property funds.

The pidgeons are coming home to roost on all these financial products making them very poor value and to be avoided in future.

17 years of continous growth and 1 of negative really makes it bad. You may not have noticed in your world that property prices have dropped.

All the mis-selling and underhand pratices doesn`t make very good reading.

The lack of objective thought and lack of knowledge on the areas you are posting about dont make good reading either. If you take that chip off your shoulder about NU and be more objective you would realise that there is nothing wrong here.

If you want to have a go at NU, then at least pick things they are not good at or where there are issues (try servicing of their legacy contracts for example). Don't bother wasting everyones time on non-issues though.

chromehorse

Re the comments on 'smoothing' - if you look at the figures the actual sums of money committed by NU to this are actually tiny - tens of millions is peanuts in the context of these huge with-profits funds. What they do is apply these small sums to terminal bonuses to try to even things up.

We are mistaken if we think they are applying smoothing to the entire funds.

What we don't know enough about is the exact way in which they 'manage' funds out of the main with-profit funds into the inherited estates. Vast sums have been appropriated over a relatively short time period and it would make anyone suspicious.

And.. for what it's worth .. set against the size of Aviva the name change budget is tiny. In my view it's a tiny sum , but very badly spent. 'Aviva' is quite meaningless to most people - according to Wikipedia

"The company name, Aviva, is a Hebrew name meaning Spring or Renewal (as in Tel Aviv).[10] It is pronounced Ah-Vee-Vah."

I feel it's decidely unfortunate that an international firm should choose such a word. I wonder what the Arabic equivalent is?

alared

I can remember when British Steel and a Dutch company merged and they decided to pay a large amount of money to a consultancy firm to come up with a suitable name.

After a lot of searching and researching they came up with the name Corus.
Low and behold after it was accepted and logos began being changed etc.,it was dicovered that there was a hotel group in this country already called Corus.
Now how hard would have that been to find out.

Two great companies Guinness and Grand Met merged and came up with the obscure name of Diageo,which again means nothing to Joe Public.

daveoc22

I caught the end of the financial paper review on BBC Breakfast news this morning and one paper is running the story that NU are going to announce the scrapping of this pay out.

Anyone anymore details, may have been FT but not sure.

nine0six

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1b93e06-f22f-11dd-9678-0000779fd2ac.html

alared

This is no great surprise.
I have been raising my doubts many,many times on this thread and also BEFORE the recent "market turmoil",which they are now blaming so they can cut and run.

If this useless company had "got on with it", when THEY originally brought the matter up, FOUR years ago, they might have enhanced their now shoddy,worthless reputation.

alared

The saga goes on as NU welches on the deal

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7869112.stm

About 700,000 people were due to be offered between £400 and £1,000, and another 220,000 would have been offered a payout of between £1,000 and £3,500 if they accepted.

But the company said that falling share and property prices had eroded the surplus in its funds, making the offer "no longer fair".
No longer fair to them that means


The company recently cut by 15% the payouts on its maturing 25-year mortgage endowment policies. And it has told a quarter of a million savers in one of its main commercial property investment funds that they will have to wait up to six months to withdraw their money.
The pain goes on from this greedy company