complaint upheld, so why am I not happy?

FOSman

Katykat wrote:

I am glad that the regulars are posting in thi thread, but nobody has yet advised me what I should do. Should we accept the decision, which may or may not culminate in compensation, or should we go to IFA. Incidently, if we accept the decision, then Halifax offer no or little compensation, do we still have the option of using the ombudsman.? There seems to be a familiar theme in these cases, that many Banks refuse the complaint "because there is no evidence that we were told that the policy would pay off the mortgage". Now is this a valid point? Surely the whole point in taking the endowment out was to pay off the mortgage. & what evidence is acceptable?

Hi Katykat,

Firstly, for a complaint to be upheld on a guarantee, which would force Halifax to pay the final shortfall on the policy, you would need to find evidence that they guaranteed the policy would pay off the loan. As they are going to deny this, you will need to find something in writing. It will be highly unlikely that you will find anything of this nature. In fact, I would say that only 1 in 50,000 complaints (if that) get upheld on guarantee.

I would accept the RU89 as this is the most likely the best you are going to get. It is by far the most common form of redress. You can of course ask the FOS to look at the complaint if you are unhappy, but beware that if you do and the calculation they have done is correct and inline with the FOS's view, then the firm will not be obliged to re-calculate the loss.

Let us know what you do.

Katykat

Thanks FOSman, we have today accepted the decision and will await whatever they offer us. Hopefully, it wont be an insult, although we are not expecting to be able to retire on the compo. I think my B-in-law must have been one of the 50,000, as he kept all the paper work including the doodles that the guy at the bank made which were of a caravan ,car and tropical island holiday that he told them they would be able to afford with their terminal bonus. So somebodies doodles probably earned them a ticking off.

Katykat

As an update to the above, we have been offered £1930 which we have decided to accept as we are able to keep the policy and not have to surrender it. It has 4 years left. It was originally taken out for £34000, with a terminal bonus "probably in the region of £50000" as told by the guy at the Halifax. It is estimated to pay out between £26-£29000. We foolishly thought that in 2009 we would have about £84000 to see us through our retirement ( we have already paid the mortgage off now) but well, it was not to be. Just have to hope that the market picks up a little in the next 4 years, but we wont be holding our breath.

EdInvestor

Katykat


The good news is that Aviva are planning to distribute the orphan assets of the CU and GA With profit funds, so you should be in line for a windfall.It's more than 3bn quid they're giving out , so the windfalls might be similar to the ones people will get at Standard Life

These two are easily the two biggest endowment providers, so the general gloom about endowments might lift a bit next year.

Katykat

unfortunately Edinvestor, although the original policy was with General Accident, a few years ago it was taken over by Norwich Union, so I guess we lose out twice. I thought at the time it was because GA had offloaded their policies, but I'm not really sure now. We didn't even have any notification that we had been transfered, first we knew was when our annual bonus certificate arrived. Same policy number, names & DOB,etc. Do you have any idea why our policy might have been transfered?

dunstonh

NU bought GA.

whiteflag_3

EdInvestor wrote:

Katykat


The good news is that Aviva are planning to distribute the orphan assets of the CU and GA With profit funds, so you should be in line for a windfall.It's more than 3bn quid they're giving out , so the windfalls might be similar to the ones people will get at Standard Life

These two are easily the two biggest endowment providers, so the general gloom about endowments might lift a bit next year.

So does this mean policyholders who have already been compensated for being "missold" the policy in the first place will be handing the windfall back?!

EdInvestor

Katykat

Do not worry, you will get the windfall.You're policy is still with GA, but as dh says, GA was bought by NU, whoich later changed its name to Aviva (still awake at the back? ) which has now decided to distribute the windfalls.

Whiteflag

I doubt it: there was a case some years ago involving IIRC a Scottish Life member where there was an attempt to take windfall money into account when calculating compensation but the decision was that windfalls had to be ignored.

whiteflag_3

EdInvestor wrote:

Katykat

Do not worry, you will get the windfall.You're policy is still with GA, but as dh says, GA was bought by NU, whoich later changed its name to Aviva (still awake at the back? ) which has now decided to distribute the windfalls.

So where is the loss, where is the miss selling?



Just highlights how crass the whole compensation issue is!

EdInvestor

This was all dealt with in the High Court years ago.

FYI here's a note of the decision:

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/ombudsman-news/11/11.pdf