Lost Pension Policy used to back a mortgage paid off years ago

LittleMissThoughtful

I'd be grateful of help/direction.

I'm trying to find a Pension Policy which backed a mortgage back in the 1980's for my friend who ran his own retail (market trading business for 44 years). The nature of his work meant he's moved home quite regularly. Consequently, he's lost sight of a pension policy (premiums £160+ running from mid 1980's to 1999 or so before being made paid up). Last known home was with his wife, before divorce  and paperwork was being received then 2002. Since then there have been 8 changes of address and no paperwork received at any of them.

I've blitzed all the obvious pension players in the market tracing mergers/acquisitions etc but so far no luck.
We don't know the name of the company.

We do know Yorkshire bank were the original mortgagor and on the last house move with his wife  in 1999 there was a move to a repayment mortgage with another more competitive lender.

I have contacted the Yorkshire Bank - via Virgin Money who acquired them. I went up to Board level dealing with a PA asking for them to access what would have been paper records of the mortgage and their charge over the associated Pension Policy (or at least they would have noted an interest in it) asking for the name of the Pension provider.

But I'm dealing with digital natives - 20 somethings who never lived/worked with ledgers so they haven't looked properly - I'm being stonewalled.

Its going to be a considerable sum close to 6 figures so I am loathe to give up.
Can anyone help. Possible ex Yorkshire Bank employees who worked on Mortgage Teams who would maybe recall names of which Pension companies they used.

Thanks

dunstonh

The nature of his work meant he's moved home quite regularly. Consequently, he's lost sight of a pension policy (premiums £160+ running from mid 1980's to 1999 or so before being made paid up)

That would make it a section 226 retirement annuity contract (not a personal pension as they were introduced in 1988).

I have contacted the Yorkshire Bank - via Virgin Money who acquired them. I went up to Board level dealing with a PA asking for them to access what would have been paper records of the mortgage and their charge over the associated Pension Policy (or at least they would have noted an interest in it) asking for the name of the Pension provider.

You cannot put a charge against pension policies.

But I'm dealing with digital natives - 20 somethings who never lived/worked with ledgers so they haven't looked properly - I'm being stonewalled.

There is probably nothing for them to look at.    Data protection would likely long destroyed any records in that respect as its been almost 30 years since the pension would have been marked on the direct debit card for being used as security for the pension (i.e. don't cancel direct debit). That is about as much security they could put in place with a pension. (unlike endowment which would have been assigned to the lender as well as having the direct debit card marked).

Can anyone help. Possible ex Yorkshire Bank employees who worked on Mortgage Teams who would maybe recall names of which Pension companies they used.

Before polarisation (1988) building societies typically didn't tie to one provider.    Many of them had local arrangements with an indedendent brokerage or ran their own brokerage.  Or they just let the person go and arrange it themselves.  Some started just before the polarisation date in readiness.

born_again

LittleMissThoughtful said:

I'd be grateful of help/direction.

I'm trying to find a Pension Policy which backed a mortgage back in the 1980's for my friend who ran his own retail (market trading business for 44 years). The nature of his work meant he's moved home quite regularly. Consequently, he's lost sight of a pension policy (premiums £160+ running from mid 1980's to 1999 or so before being made paid up). Last known home was with his wife, before divorce  and paperwork was being received then 2002. Since then there have been 8 changes of address and no paperwork received at any of them.

I've blitzed all the obvious pension players in the market tracing mergers/acquisitions etc but so far no luck.
We don't know the name of the company.

We do know Yorkshire bank were the original mortgagor and on the last house move with his wife  in 1999 there was a move to a repayment mortgage with another more competitive lender.

I have contacted the Yorkshire Bank - via Virgin Money who acquired them. I went up to Board level dealing with a PA asking for them to access what would have been paper records of the mortgage and their charge over the associated Pension Policy (or at least they would have noted an interest in it) asking for the name of the Pension provider.

But I'm dealing with digital natives - 20 somethings who never lived/worked with ledgers so they haven't looked properly - I'm being stonewalled.

Its going to be a considerable sum close to 6 figures so I am loathe to give up.
Can anyone help. Possible ex Yorkshire Bank employees who worked on Mortgage Teams who would maybe recall names of which Pension companies they used.

Thanks

Any paperwork will have been sent somewhere like Iron Mountain for storage, if lucky. Problem is now with change of ownership. It is possible that it has been destroyed. Ledgers went out long before the 80's

https://www.pensiontracingservice.com/

Marcon

OP - there's no point badgering Yorkshire Bank. Your friend will have set up his own Retirement Annuity Contract which, as already pointed out, could not be charged, assigned or otherwise promised to any third party. If the mortgage was paid off 'years ago' there would be no reason for them to have any record - and indeed it would be a breach of data protection regs if they had retained such information. Try https://www.gretel.co.uk/

The link to the 'official' government-established pension tracing service is: https://www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details but I don't think that will help here - although it might help others reading this thread.

DullGreyGuy

born_again said:

LittleMissThoughtful said:

I'd be grateful of help/direction.

I'm trying to find a Pension Policy which backed a mortgage back in the 1980's for my friend who ran his own retail (market trading business for 44 years). The nature of his work meant he's moved home quite regularly. Consequently, he's lost sight of a pension policy (premiums £160+ running from mid 1980's to 1999 or so before being made paid up). Last known home was with his wife, before divorce  and paperwork was being received then 2002. Since then there have been 8 changes of address and no paperwork received at any of them.

I've blitzed all the obvious pension players in the market tracing mergers/acquisitions etc but so far no luck.
We don't know the name of the company.

We do know Yorkshire bank were the original mortgagor and on the last house move with his wife  in 1999 there was a move to a repayment mortgage with another more competitive lender.

I have contacted the Yorkshire Bank - via Virgin Money who acquired them. I went up to Board level dealing with a PA asking for them to access what would have been paper records of the mortgage and their charge over the associated Pension Policy (or at least they would have noted an interest in it) asking for the name of the Pension provider.

But I'm dealing with digital natives - 20 somethings who never lived/worked with ledgers so they haven't looked properly - I'm being stonewalled.

Its going to be a considerable sum close to 6 figures so I am loathe to give up.
Can anyone help. Possible ex Yorkshire Bank employees who worked on Mortgage Teams who would maybe recall names of which Pension companies they used.

Thanks

Any paperwork will have been sent somewhere like Iron Mountain for storage, if lucky. Problem is now with change of ownership. It is possible that it has been destroyed. Ledgers went out long before the 80's

Since GDPR made a legal obligation to minimise storage of personal information there have been vast cleanses of data stored. Some did choose the expensive route of bringing everything back and sorting it by hand but many went for the cheapest option of just deleting/buring stuff over a certain age. 

Physical record storage is a really odd industry, Iron Mountain has about 92% of the market. Graphic Data has about 7% of the market. The remaining 1% is shared by over 1,000 companies... or at least it was the case 15 years ago.

dunstonh

Since GDPR made a legal obligation to minimise storage of personal information there have been vast cleanses of data stored. 

It was similar with the original DPA in 94.   I was employed back then with a bank and the removal of files at the start was extraordinary.  It was treated very seriously and far too much data was removed.    It eased off over time but the GDPR was pretty much a repeat for younger generations that were not around the first time.

What was also of note of 1980s and 1990s storage was the lack of care with anything that was perceived to never see the light of day again.   File boxes would break up and files fall out over the floor and people would stand on them until they ripped and were binned.  Files that fell out and picked up would go into any box.   Nobody cared because the odds of that piece of paper ever being needed again was so low.

When they were due to be taken away, they got put in bags and sealed.   But when being put on the van, they would be thrown in the back like an Evri delivery and there was no way the boxes would have remained intact inside the bag.   

xylophone

I'm trying to find a Pension Policy which backed a mortgage back in the 1980's 

Are you sure it wasn't an Endowment policy?

https://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/news/10m-endowment-policies-used-in-80s-and-90s/

More than 10 million mortgage endowment policies are thought to have been sold in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s, claims Fairinvestment.co.uk.

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN00570/SN00570.pdf

I think that it was possible to make these paid up after payments had been made for a certain period.

And you are sure that it was Yorkshire Bank and not Yorkshire BS?

Either way though, what normally happened was that the policy document was held in the custody of the mortgagor until the debt 

was redeemed.

When the policy was no longer security for the loan, the document would normally be released to the policy holder.

Has a search been made amongst your friend's papers?

Try Gretel?

https://www.gretel.co.uk/claim-misplaced-investments

SVaz

The chance of finding a document in archived storage without at least a policy number is infinitessimal.
It was a combination of me finding a 50 year old letter with an account number from a long defunct Building society and the blind luck of speaking to a Woman who had actually worked for them and knew there was a storage facility in Liverpool that led to finding the Deeds to my Father’s house,  it took six months for someone to trawl through dusty shelves and find them. 

dunstonh

Are you sure it wasn't an Endowment policy?

That is a very good question.

Section 226 RACs didn't have 25% tax free cash.   That came with the introduction of PPPs.    The OP says it was mid 80s. So, that would make it an S226, if it was a pension.
S226 could pay a tax free cash of three times the annual annuity.  So, not really suited for debt repayment.

The concept of using a pension to pay the mortgage didn't really start until PPPs were introduced with their fixed 25% TFC.

Roger175

dunstonh said:

Are you sure it wasn't an Endowment policy?

That is a very good question.

Section 226 RACs didn't have 25% tax free cash.   That came with the introduction of PPPs.    The OP says it was mid 80s. So, that would make it an S226, if it was a pension.
S226 could pay a tax free cash of three times the annual annuity.  So, not really suited for debt repayment.

The concept of using a pension to pay the mortgage didn't really start until PPPs were introduced with their fixed 25% TFC.

I'm not sure if it was the same thing, but in 1987, we took out a mortgage which was definitely backed by a pension.  The circumstances were this:- Our previous mortgage was a staff mortgaged from Barclays, who my wife worked for at the time. We then wanted to borrow some further money against the house for use in a property development. Barclays refused to extend the staff mortgage, so we temporally changed to Lloyds for a couple of years. Lloyds initially suggested an endowment backed mortgage, but we refused so they offered us a similar type mortgage backed by a pension and I took out a specific new pension for this purpose. We were told the Pension couldn't be assigned to Lloyds in the way an endowment could, and so they took possession of the original pension documents and these were stored safely and returned to us when we cleared the mortgage only two years later (to return to the Barclays staff mortgage arrangement).

I have never heard of anyone else who had this 'Pension Mortgage' arrangement, but I can categorically confirm it was a thing.

I continued pay into the pension for a few years and subsequently transferred it to my main scheme. It was actually a very worthwhile way to back the mortgage for a temporary period, as I still have that money (+40 years of growth) in my pension pot and given that I was in my early 20's at the time, I probably wouldn't have otherwise made those pension contributions. 

LHW99

Roger175 said:

dunstonh said:

Are you sure it wasn't an Endowment policy?

That is a very good question.

Section 226 RACs didn't have 25% tax free cash.   That came with the introduction of PPPs.    The OP says it was mid 80s. So, that would make it an S226, if it was a pension.
S226 could pay a tax free cash of three times the annual annuity.  So, not really suited for debt repayment.

The concept of using a pension to pay the mortgage didn't really start until PPPs were introduced with their fixed 25% TFC.

I'm not sure if it was the same thing, but in 1987, we took out a mortgage which was definitely backed by a pension.  The circumstances were this:- Our previous mortgage was a staff mortgaged from Barclays, who my wife worked for at the time. We then wanted to borrow some further money against the house for use in a property development. Barclays refused to extend the staff mortgage, so we temporally changed to Lloyds for a couple of years. Lloyds initially suggested an endowment backed mortgage, but we refused so they offered us a similar type mortgage backed by a pension and I took out a specific new pension for this purpose. We were told the Pension couldn't be assigned to Lloyds in the way an endowment could, and so they took possession of the original pension documents and these were stored safely and returned to us when we cleared the mortgage only two years later (to return to the Barclays staff mortgage arrangement).

I have never heard of anyone else who had this 'Pension Mortgage' arrangement, but I can categorically confirm it was a thing.

I continued pay into the pension for a few years and subsequently transferred it to my main scheme. It was actually a very worthwhile way to back the mortgage for a temporary period, as I still have that money (+40 years of growth) in my pension pot and given that I was in my early 20's at the time, I probably wouldn't have otherwise made those pension contributions. 

Interesting Roger 175. We have never had such a product, but I do remember when we were looking at a new mortgage in around 1986 that there were such things being talked about in some of the financial magazines. Unfortunately we ended up with an endowment that fell short - despite saying to the salesman, what happens if it doesn't make enough to pay off the morgage... "Oh it always does" was the reply.