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

Dazed_and_C0nfused

DRS1 said:

Going back to the OP's original question - does your friend have any old accounts/tax papers?  I seem to recall having to fill in forms for the Inland Revenue showing contributions to section 226 policies where I had to name the insurer and provide the policy number.  If he has any copies of such forms then it should give you an answer,
Alternatively any old bank statements might show the payments going out and give some clue where they went.

I think that was needed on pre Self Assessment tax returns.  A lifetime ago now!

silvercar

It definitely was a thing in the early 90s. I know friends who chose to assign their lump sum due from a future pension, rather than take an endowment policy. How much legal backing they had to do to assign the lump sum to the lender I don’t know. 

It looks like you need to be searching for a lost pension, rather than a mortgage company.

Marcon

silvercar said:

It definitely was a thing in the early 90s. I know friends who chose to assign their lump sum due from a future pension, rather than take an endowment policy. How much legal backing they had to do to assign the lump sum to the lender I don’t know. 

It looks like you need to be searching for a lost pension, rather than a mortgage company.

You can't assign a pension. The technical term for trying to do so is 'alienation' - and the penalty for even attempting it can be loss of the entire pension. Only a court can order assignment.

I'm unconvinced that this is a lost pension. I think it's more likely to be some sort of endowment policy or similar, and it's quite possible that it was paid out at the time the mortgage was paid off - and we all know what happened to the 'promised' level of payments under those....

If the holder of the policy couldn't be bothered to keep track of it, it's a bit much to expect any financial institution to go combing through paper records to find something from decades ago, with no clue as to what sort of savings vehicle it really was, no policy number or anything else, and possibly not even anything to do with them if OP's friend has misremembered which institution they were dealing with. From OP's opening post, it's not at all clear that they understand old paper records were often stored in repositories the size of aircraft hangers, not some neat little filing cabinet with the friend's name on!

Max_sMum

I have just been told by Phoenix Life that a section 226 pension incepted in around 1987 to support a Barclays Bank mortgage (long since redeemed) cannot now be paid out to me because Barclays Bank is still an assignee on the plan. How do I go about removing Barclays as an assignee? Phoenix Life have told me they will write to Barclays but I'd like to expedite the process if possible.

xylophone

I have just been told by Phoenix Life that a section 226 pension incepted in around 1987 to support a Barclays Bank mortgage (long since redeemed) cannot now be paid out to me because Barclays Bank is still an assignee on the plan. 

Looks very similar to

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81068408/#Comment_81068408

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).

It appears however that Barclays could not be an assignee on a pension policy? Rather they held the S226 policy documents  in their custody as security/collateral?

When you repaid the mortgage  (presumably without recourse to the pension) you did not ask (and Barclays did not arrange) for the return of the documents?

I assume that the contract was originally with one of the insurers "gobbled up" by Phoenix and records now held by Phoenix show details of the arrangement with Barclays?

No doubt you have evidence of your mortgage redemption. Are Phoenix now requesting the return of the documents from Barclays?

It would not seem wise for you to involve yourself in a parallel request as this could lead to confusion and delay?

Max_sMum

After lots of time on musical hold, I finally got a letter from Barclays confirming no interest in the pension. Still now jumping through hoops to get Phoenix Life to pay out the 25% tax free lump sum and confirm the annuity but it's progress! Phoenix Life never did contact Barclays on my behalf...

Marcon

Max_sMum said:

After lots of time on musical hold, I finally got a letter from Barclays confirming no interest in the pension. Still now jumping through hoops to get Phoenix Life to pay out the 25% tax free lump sum and confirm the annuity but it's progress! Phoenix Life never did contact Barclays on my behalf...

Glad you've got something out of this thread. The person who started it doesn't seem to ...

sheramber

We took out an am endowment mortgagee in 1978.

We increased our mortgaged when we moved house in 1981 and took out another endowment to cover the additional amount.

After a few years we took out another additional sum again covered by an endowment.


All three policies paid out more than the sums required to pay off  the mortgage they were covering. 

Payment of the required amounts went direct to the mortgage provider and the balance was paid to us.