Maturing Standard life policies

geemac

I have been reading some of the threads concerning Standard life windfall payments and before asking SL some specific questions I wanted to make a few queries here.

I have 2 with profits policies maturing 25 Sept 05 and 12 March 06 and SL have written to say that I could invest in a Maturing with profits bond. I read somewhere that the minimum investment in this would be £5000 but as this would be a new policy would it qualify for any windfall? I also understand that there may be penalties for withdrawing soon after demutualisation so is it worth the hastle?

If you have 2 policies would you get 2 windfall payments?

Any comments welcome.

EdInvestor

Hi geemac

geemac wrote:

I have 2 with profits policies maturing 25 Sept 05 and 12 March 06 and SL have written to say that I could invest in a Maturing with profits bond. I read somewhere that the minimum investment in this would be £5000 but as this would be a new policy would it qualify for any windfall?

Yes it will qualify: but you will lose your seniority. The windfall is based on length of membership as well as size of the sum invested.

I also understand that there may be penalties for withdrawing soon after demutualisation so is it worth the hassle?

There is a risk of this.The problem is that the SL WP bond has no penalty free withdrawal date It's a difficult one.

Standard Life did however hint last week that they may be considering allowing people like yourself to receive a windfall - there is a precedent for this at other life office DMs.

If you have 2 policies would you get 2 windfall payments?

You would only get one flat rate payment for loss of membership ( that's usually 500 quid) but the additional variable rate percentage based windfall would be based on the value and time invested of both policies.

dunstonh

There is a risk of this.The problem is that the SL WP bond has no penalty free withdrawal date It's a difficult one.

Standard Life did however hint last week that they may be considering allowing people like yourself to receive a windfall - there is a precedent for this at other life office DMs.

To put what you want to do in context. If you were asking me to facilitate that transaction, I would not do it. Investing in SL WP funds to gain, what is likely to be a small DM bonus at the expense of potentially tieing up your money in a low performing fund for the next 10-15 years is pointless.

jrh2254

I started a thread on this subject a number of weeks ago.
Subsequent to this I wrote to Standard Life and asked for details of the Maturing WP bond. The minimum investment is £5k. What they sent me were meaningless illustrations of what I might get back at certain % returns. The funds available appeared to be low performing with some high charges!

I decided the risk was too high for the potential windfall payment. I took the money and ran!

I also thought that as Standard Life said last week it was considering the status of members whose policies matured just before DM I may still be in with a chance. I will be monitoring closely what this means.

geemac

Many thanks for the advice and comments from everyone. I think like jrh2254, I will just take the money when the first policy matures and use it elsewhere.

jrh2254

It was reported by Standard Life on Money Box yesterday that the cut-off for maturing policies is the 18th October 2005. So I read this as meaning that if your policy matures between 19th October 2005 and the date of demutilisation then you remain a member and get the windfall!
Mine matured in August 2005 :mad:

Iona_Penny

My husband and I ( sorry Queenie! ) have two endowment policies with Std Life maturing June and August 06. I understand that as both policies have him as the forst named person he will be the only one to qualify for 1 lot of membership (20+ years ago the woman didn't even think she should have her name first) is this correct?

carnet

Iona_Penny wrote:

My husband and I ( sorry Queenie! ) have two endowment policies with Std Life maturing June and August 06. I understand that as both policies have him as the forst named person he will be the only one to qualify for 1 lot of membership (20+ years ago the woman didn't even think she should have her name first) is this correct?

Yes. You should have formally applied to StdL to alter one of the policies so that you were the first named - so that you would both qualify for the fixed payment for loss of voting rights.

I understand a lot of people have done this in recent years in anticipation of DM.

Unfortunately, it would seem, wef 18 Oct., it's too late to do so now.

Iona_Penny

Never occured to me it was something I could have done..Ah well live and learn.