 Scottish Provident - thanks for the premiums - we'll keep them.
It is bad enough having been given a series of grossly over-inflated predictions over the course of twenty years or so, by Scottish Provident, (SP) and to end up with such a paltry sum, but when the company refuses to pay the cash when the policy finally matures is really quite outrageous.
Before I left England to live abroad for some time I phoned SP to make arrangements about the sum it would be paying me when one of my two endowment policies matured on 21 March 2006. I was told that as the policy was assigned to Halifax Bank against my mortgage loan they would be paying the amount to the bank directly. I asked if there would be any further paper work I needed to complete as I would be abroad on the maturity date and was assured me there wasn't. On the 7 December 2005 SP phoned me with the estimated value of the policy on maturity and again assured me that there was no further paper work I needed to complete. In early March I received the following email from my 84 year old mother:
Had a letter for you this am from Scottish Provident about your maturing life assurance policy. They wrote to you on the 8th Feb. with maturity forms but have not yet had a reply from you. I have been all through your correspondence I have had and can't find any forms, in fact nothing else from the aforesaid firm.
The fact that the Royal Mail have failed to re-direct the mail as contracted, is of course another matter. Last time I used this service, 47 items of post were delivered to my home rather than the re-direction address, so I'm used to it's 'service'.
I replied to SP:
Do you not find it amazing that an 84 year old great grandmother can master the intricacies of the internet and email while you at Scottish Provident are still shackled to paper and the postal system. I'm surprised you don't require your customers to correspond with ink on vellum. Is it any wonder that your investment strategy appears also to be so woefully out of touch with reality? And please don't bleat on to me about security of emails and so on as other financial institutions as well as countless numbers of commercial organisations seem quite content to allow their customers to use email communications.
Needless to say, SP claim never to have received this letter.
SP then said that as the policy was assigned to another building society and they didn't have my signature on one of its forms, they would be keeping the money until I complied. The building society is one I had redeemed a mortgage with in 1992 and who at my request had sent SP confirmation in Sept. 2005 that it no longer had an interest in the policy. SP claims never to have received this confirmation. The building society sent another confirmation on April 10 but SP has yet to confirm to me that it has arrived.
Now I need to borrow money, but through no fault of my own have defaulted on paying off a large part of my exisitng mortgage with the maturity cash from the SP policy.
And what does Sharon Fitzsimons at SP say?
I can advise you that we have indeed received all your correspondence i.e complaints and I can advise you that all have been forwarded to our customer relations department to be processed. and will be in touch with you in due course.
Were I not on the other side of the world and half way up a mountain, I'd be camping outside SP's palatial offices in Glasgow with a banner. | 
