Standard Life WP Endowment Mis-selling Claim

carnet

I recently asked much of the following in the middle of another thread but it seemed to have got lost as no replies were forthcoming - does anyone know the answers ?

1. Is there still a case for mis-selling of a WP endowment policy if no advice from a third party intermediary was asked for or given ie an intermediary was used for the deal but strictly on an execution only basis, purely for the discount . ?

2. If one was to make a succesful claim re. mis-selling of a Standard Life WP endowment policy can the policy (and, more to the point, one's windfall prospects;)) be retained or must the policy be surrendered ?

3. If the latter, might it not be better to refrain from making any claim until the DM "cut-off" date - or will the cut-off date for making any mis-selling claim arrive first ??

dunstonh

1 - If was execution only and no advice sought, then how can you complain about advice? The answer is no.

2 - it can be retained

3 - time barring rules would stop that.

However, you dont have grounds for complaint so its not an issue.

carnet

Whilst your points are taken fully, I still seem to recall having read somewhere about execution-only clients still having the right to claim compensation over endowment mis-selling.

This could well have been direct with the Life Co., rather than any intermediary, possibly because none of their projections given at the time would obviously show any possibility of a shortfall .

As Ned Cazelet said to the Treasury Committee on 11.11.03;

"The complaint rate may have been low but I am aware of quite a few large insurance companies who have over 100 staff doing nothing but deal with complaints. Whether these have got to the Ombudsman is another matter, but it is quite a long time process. We are aware of a number of companies which are unable to meet the Regulator's eight-week timetable for dealing with complaints and have asked for a waiver so they might be able to deal with them in 16 weeks, but now there is a suggestion they cannot deal with the volume of complaints within 16 weeks. The complaint level might be very low, that might have been the case but I think it is escalating. There was a remark that grounds for misselling are that the sum could be achieved, well that was the whole point. I do not think anybody said, "Mrs Miggins, about your home loan, have an endowment, the sum needed to cover the home loan might not be achieved." If they were told that, they would not have bought it."

Will have to look into this further.

EdInvestor

Hi Carnet

The only case I can think of where people have been able to get misselling compensation when they weren't actually formally sold anything was a few cases of execution-only IFAs sending out personally addressed fliers to their client mailing list with various "special offer" type product recommendations on them. IIRC this involved the dreaded precipice bonds and the victims tended to be in the "widow and orphan" category.