Hi,

My mother-in-law is going to have a shortfall in her mortgage endowment policy which she took out in the 80's she was advised at the time that by taking the endowment policy not only would it pay off the mortgage but it would also leave her with some extra left over!

I really don't know where to start with claiming back anything or even if I can claim anything for her but I said I would look into it and ask a few questions for her.

We don't really want to be paying one of those no win no fee people, we'd rather donate 5% to CAG!

Could anyone point me in the right direction as to what I need to do please?

Your help is apprecaited

Thanks

Marsay

Please could someone point us in the right direction?

anybody?

I've got a feeling you've missed the boat on this one.

Unfortunately we have passed their deadline date for complaints so can't go down the mis-selling route.

 

This is from the thread http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/insurance-assurance-companies/38837-im-sueing-my-endowment.html?highlight=endowment+shorfall

Hope it helps, sorry I can't be of more assistance

It depends on which endowment company, I was 'out of time' but told them it was due to problems in my personal life, I laid it on a bit and they reconsidered when I complained to the FSA. They finally admitted miselling and the cheque should arrive any day. I would have a go - you've got nothing to lose, write them a letter complaining about the endowment and see what they say. Good luck

Hi,

Thanks for your response, so my first step is to write to the endowment company complaining of miselling the policy i.e. the promise of the endowment paying off the mortgage and having some left over which will not be the case now!?

Do you know what the cut off date was for complaining?

Also do you know of any step by step guides like those for bank charges? I ask as I have not dealt with the miselling of endowment policy before and really don't know where to start.

Kind Regards

Nick

I used the guidelines from the FSA website. I think the cut off date was 3 years from the date of 'high risk' statement - but I got round that by saying that I had reasonable cause for not complaining sooner. Writing to the company is the first step and depending on their response you can complain to the FSA once you have reached 'deadlock'

There are a number of links on the web if you google 'endowment shortfall' unfortunately none of them are particularly new, I think the latest one I found was 2005.

Hi

I'm currently pursuing my grandmothers endowment shortfall.

From my understanding you have three years from the date of the 'red letter', that all companies must have sent if there is a high risk of a shortfall.

But evidence of a shortfall is not enough. You need to prove one of the other grounds.

Its definately best to go at it alone. The endowment companies usually charge a 25% fee plus VAT!

Yes, been here and got the t shirt. I tried through a claims assist no win no fee and they were useless. Now the deadline has passed and I've missed out. Go it alone, lay it on thick, and you should get some joy. If you don't, yoir mum in law will only receive another letter like I did yesterday informimg me my payout has now dropped by approx £12,000. Incidentally my policy was taken out in 1986 for £32,000.

Best of luck to you!

ketto

Hello guys

I've in the last week been successful in challenging Winterthur for mis-selling me my endowment in April 1998.

I did it on my own and they didn't even challenge me - they seem to have rolled over and have just asked me how (of two ways) I want them to calculate the difference in interest from what I would have accrued had I taken out a repayment instead - this is what the FSC would recommend and they'll cough up!

I got all the information as to which tacks to try off the Which! website and am happy to post my successful letter tomorrow when I've had a chance to upload it from my old PC to my Mac.

I'm sorry for those who have missed the deadline for their particular endowment company, but those of you who haven't or are even not yet sure if you have (!) do not give up hope and don't be tempted to go with the 'no win no fee' sharks - as - with everything else on this site, it's well within our grasp to do it ourselves given the correct advice.

Watch this space, will post letter tomorrow!

221b

I worked for a 'no win no fee' company when shortfalls came to light a few years ago.Go to the Which consumer website and use the template letter for initial complaint. You have 3 years from the date of the 1st High risk(red letter) was recieved to complain.Do not let them fob you off.If they reject it go to the financial ombudsman. Prepare for the long haul anything up to a year.

Thay want you to get fed up and go away.

If an offer is made it will not reflect the shortfall your mother is facing, but will reflect the comparison made had she taken out a repayment mortgage instead over the same period of time.

Her first priority is to make sure there are provisions for the mortgage to be repayed at the end of the term, Whether she changes to repayment or increases the premium on the endowment to make sure its covered. But why would you want to continue giving money to a company that has not looked after her interests.

Good luck and hang in there

Hi,

Thanks for all the information so far, I will be seeing my mother-in-law next week so I would like to have an action plan put together for her by then.

221b: I would be interested in the letters you sent and received so if you can get the info to me I would really really appreciate it, feel free to PM me with the details or drop them in this post.

Thanks again for all of your help so far

Regards

Nick

Just a word of caution if I may Nick.

You say the endowment policy was taken out in the 1980's. The Financial Services Act came into play in 1988, therefore if the policy was taken out before this date, the life company may not agree to look into your complaint.

I am aware of the earlier post from someone who claimed successfully against a policy taken out in 1986. It should be stressed that this presumably was done at the life companies discretion. They are not duty bound to do so.

Good luck to you.

Thia is very long I'm afraid, but it's a collection of bits of various documents and my own musings through succesfully claiming back money owed to me through a mis-sold endowment. Nightmare computer problems trapped this doc in my old computer for 6 weeks so apologies for the long delay!

If you find it useful, please click the scales!

More than five million endowments have a shortfall. If yours is one of them, is this just bad luck or were you badly advised?

There are 11 million endowment policies linked to mortgages in the UK. More than half are predicted to fail to do what they were sold to do - pay off people's mortgages. This is yet another depressing statistic to add to the financial services industry's dismal track record. Yet, despite the enormity of the problem, the regulator for financial services, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), won't conduct an industry review.

No review - no problem?

This doesn't mean there hasn't been mis-selling, or that you can't claim compensation if you were wrongly advised to take out an endowment mortgage. What it does mean is that the onus is on you to get your case reviewed, by making a complaint.

Read on to find out whether you have a valid complaint, how to put your complaint together and how much compensation you might receive if your complaint is upheld.

How to Seek Compensation

You won't receive compensation simply because your endowment has a shortfall. Use our guide to find out whether you should claim

The fact that your endowment has a shortfall is not, in itself, grounds for complaint. You have to prove that you were wrongly advised to take out an endowment mortgage, and that you have lost out financially as a result. Think back to the meetings you had with your adviser and what you were told. If any of the following ring a bell, you may have good grounds for making a complaint.

Your attitude to risk

A lot depends on your attitude to risk at the time the endowment was sold to you, and on whether your adviser established this. Recent research by the FSA Consumer Panel showed that only 10 per cent of people surveyed said the adviser told them about the risk attached to endowments.

The adviser should have established how risky or cautious you were with your savings or investments, and explained that there was a risk the endowment might not pay off the mortgage. They should have told you that the amount you would get back depended on the performance of the policy, and discussed carefully the fund(s) in which you invested.

Overstated claims

We know from the many Which? members who have contacted us that advisers often used to be bullish about the likely performance of the endowment, boasting that it would not only pay off the mortgage, but also produce an additional lump sum. Some advisers claimed that 'no endowment has ever failed to paid off a mortgage'. If your adviser said things like this, include it in your complaint, even if you have no proof.

Churning

If you already had an endowment policy at the time the mortgage was recommended, this should have been used to back your loan. If your adviser told you to cash in the endowment and then sold you another one to replace it, this is called 'churning' and is appalling advice. It's also against the rules.

Payments into retirement

If your mortgage and endowment were set to continue past your expected retirement age, your adviser should have felt confident that you would have enough income in retirement to continue to pay the mortgage and endowment premiums. If this wasn't discussed, or if you were told not to worry because the endowment would pay off the mortgage before retirement, this is grounds for a mis-selling complaint.

Norman's conquest

You will need patience if you decide to make a complaint. Norman Huntingdon's complaint against his firm of advisers, Chatterton-Bennett, started in December 1999 and was finally upheld by the Ombudsman in August 2000. However, it took Chatterton-Bennett until December 2000 to gather all the information needed to calculate the compensation.

The good news is that interest is usually added to any claim from the date of the Ombudsman's decision. So while Norman has had to wait a while, he won't have lost out further by the delay in the compensation being paid.

Endowment Policies January 2001

Your Endowment File

Whoever advised you take out the endowment policy was required to give you 'best advice'. If the best advice for you was to choose an endowment mortgage, this should be demonstrated by the various documents that the adviser needed to complete, and which should be held on your endowment file. In reality, many files don't contain adequate evidence that an endowment was best advice. While this lack of proof is not enough in itself to ensure your complaint is upheld, it will help your case if the file is inadequate. You can ask the company that advised you for copies of all the documents on your file.

Making your complaint

The first thing to do is to contact the firm that advised you to take out the endowment. If your adviser was independent (an IFA), you must go to the compliance department of the adviser's company. If your IFA is no longer trading, go straight to the FOS for advice, see contacts.

Our step-by-step guide to making a financial complaint (here) gives more details and explains the coming changes to the various ombudsman schemes.

What to include in your complaint

Don't forget to include basic information, such as your policy number, when the advice was given and, if you know it, the adviser's name.

When putting together your complaint, summarise why you think the advice was wrong. For example, because your adviser failed to explain the risks involved with endowments, or to go through all the other options with you carefully. Perhaps they made no attempt to establish your attitude to risk, in which case include this. Also include anything the adviser said about the the policy providing a lump sum after repaying the mortgage, or about the track record of endowments.

If you are risk averse, illustrate this by explaining what other savings you had at the time you took out the mortgage. If you previously had a repayment mortgage but were persuaded to change, mention this.

More help before you complain

To streamline complaints, the FOS has a questionnaire it is sending to people who have already had their complaint assessed by their endowment provider. However, you can ask for a copy of the questionnaire to use as a guide when making your initial complaint. Also ask for a copy of the FOS's briefing note on endowment complaints. This is intended for endowment providers, but it's useful for complainants, too, as it explains how the FOS assesses complaints.

The FSA has produced factsheets about endowment shortfalls and on how to go about making a complaint. We give the FSA and FOS details on contacts.

Was the advice regulated?

Anyone who was wrongly sold an endowment after 28 April 1988, which is when the Financial Services Act came into effect, can make a formal complaint. However, as the O'Neills discovered, if you took out an endowment before this, there may be no way to seek redress.

Most large organisations, such as insurance companies and banks, have signed a voluntary jurisdiction agreement. This means that complaints concerning endowments that were taken out before April 1988 will be dealt with in the same way as all other endowment mis-selling complaints, so you shouldn't have a problem.

However, smaller firms, like IFAs, are unlikely to have signed the agreement and so need not deal with pre-April 1988 complaints at all. This also applies to firms that never became regulated. In either of these circumstances, neither the Ombudsman nor the Investors Compensation Scheme can deal with your complaint; your only hope of redress is via the courts.

Endowment Policies January 2001

Compensation

If your complaint is upheld by your endowment provider or your adviser's firm, you will be offered compensation. However, until recently this has often been derisory, as Helen Bleehen found out (see 'Compensation check', below). This was because the payout was generally a refund of premiums plus interest, which was often little more than the value of the cancelled endowment policy.

Things have improved now, though. The FSA has issued guidelines to endowment providers and financial advisers on the way they should calculate compensation.

Doing the sums

The FSA guidelines make clear that the aim of compensation is to put people into the position they would have been in had they been given the right mortgage advice. In most cases, where an endowment mortgage is considered bad advice, the best advice would probably have been to take out a repayment mortgage.

To establish whether someone has lost out financially, the FSA now requires whoever recommended the endowment to compare the current value of the endowment with the amount of capital that the borrower would have repaid had a repayment mortgage been recommended. If the capital repaid is greater than the endowment value, the loss - and the likely level of compensation - is the difference between the two amounts.

This is a fair way to work out how much compensation people are entitled to. However, it is a time-consuming calculation to make. To ensure that your complaint is not delayed, make sure you provide details of your mortgage lender and mortgage account (your reference number, for example). This will help to speed up any requests for information your endowment provider or adviser will have to make to your mortgage lender.

Taking it further

If you don't agree with the outcome of your complaint, your next step is to take your case to the ombudsman. In its 'deadlock' letter, your endowment provider or financial adviser will give you the name and address of the relevant ombudsman and details of how to complain.

Compensation check

When Helen Bleehen learnt that her endowment had a shortfall of £15,200, she complained about the advice she had received. Legal & General upheld the complaint and offered to cancel her endowment policy and to return all the premiums she had paid, plus interest.

We didn't think this was adequate compensation and advised Helen to get it checked by the Ombudsman. It's just as well we did because the FSA has recently announced that compensation will now be worked out by comparing the value of the endowment with the capital that would have been repaid with a repayment mortgage (see 'Doing the sums', above). The Ombudsman is currently calculating what Helen should receive under the new guidelines; it's likely to be considerably more than she was offered originally.

Policies January 2001

Contacts

Financial Ombudsman Service

020 7216 0016

Financial Services Authority

0845 606 1234

Institute of Financial Planning

0117 945 2470

No One to Turn to

Terry and Barbara O'Neill were sold a 20-year endowment mortgage in March 1988 after a meeting with advisers from Scottish Life and from an IFA firm, PA & OM Wright & Partners. Terry was 50 and Barbara 49, so they questioned whether the 20-year term was suitable, as it meant the endowment and mortgage continued until Terry was 70. Terry says the Scottish Life adviser assured them the endowment would pay off the mortgage by the time Terry retired at 65.

Terry is now 64 and due to retire next year. Far from being able to pay off the mortgage early, as they were promised, the endowment has a shortfall. However, the O'Neills can't get compensation. Scottish Life says the IFA is responsible for the advice because Scottish Life paid it commission for selling the endowment. The Ombudsman agrees. But the advice was given a month before regulation came into effect and the IFA is no longer trading, so none of the existing redress schemes apply. See Was the advice regulated?, for more on this.

With friends like these ...

Just two years after taking out a Friends Provident endowment through an IFA, Lesley Ashworth has been told that it has a potential shortfall of £6,100. She currently pays £312 a month for her mortgage and endowment. If she switched to a repayment mortgage - which is guaranteed to pay off the loan at the end of the term - her monthly payment would be just a few pounds more at £319.

Bad advice from Lloyds

Sally Norman and Leslie Murphy were a bit luckier than the O'Neills because they were sold their endowment mortgage in August 1988 - just after regulation came in. They have good grounds for complaint because they say their Lloyds Bank manager, who recommended they take out the endowment, didn't explain the risks this involved. They also say he failed to assess their attitude to risk or discuss any other options open to them - such as a repayment mortgage.

We estimate that, if Sally and Leslie had taken out a repayment mortgage, they would now have repaid around £19,300 of their £72,000 mortgage. Instead, after paying in £14,500 over the last 12 years, their Eagle Star endowment is worth just £10,870 and has an estimated shortfall of £22,000.

Before contacting us, they had agreed to increase their endowment premiums by £75 a month, as suggested by Eagle Star. Sally and Leslie are now making a complaint to Lloyds/TSB about the advice they received in 1988.

Mix-up with a top-up

In April 1996, Louise and Guy Bastow took out a new mortgage with Woolwich for £53,500. They already had an endowment covering their old mortgage of £23,500, so Woolwich sold them a 'top-up' endowment to cover the balance (£30,000). However, Louise says that it wasn't made clear the new endowment was just a top-up and they cashed in their first policy.

Although the sale of the top-up endowment wasn't bad advice, Louise and Guy's case highlights the need for advisers to give clear information and to ensure customers understand what they are buying. They weren't given clear information and are over £20,000 short on their mortgage as a result. Louise and Guy discovered the problem only when they received the standard projection letter that all endowment providers have been sending to their customers. Ironically, the top-up endowment is on target to repay the £30,000 it covers.

Sweet FSA

The FSA says there won't be an industry-wide review into endowment mis-selling like there was with personal pensions a few years ago. This decision is based on calculations it has done which show that, over the term of the mortgage, most people will fare at least as well with an endowment-backed loan as with a repayment one. But we think those calculations are flawed because of the way the FSA has dealt with endowment charges.

The bulk of charges on endowments are levied in the first few years. During this time, relatively little of your monthly premiums are invested, so investment growth tends to be slow or non-existent. This slow start affects the value of a policy throughout its life. However, the FSA's calculations don't take into account upfront charging. Instead, they assume that charges are spread evenly over the term of the policy. This overestimates the real value of people's endowments.

Agreement on compensation

While we agree that a review along the lines of the pension mis-selling one is not practical, we think the FSA is being too complacent and is not doing enough to identify those consumers most at risk. Having said that, the FSA does acknowledge that many people have been wrongly sold endowment mortgages, and it has now issued guidance on how their loss should be calculated. This is by comparing the financial position they are in now with the position they would have been in had they taken out a repayment mortgage.

So, if you think an endowment mortgage was wrong for you, don't be put off complaining just because there won't be an industry-wide review. Even if you have surrendered your endowment policy, you can still complain if you think you were originally given bad advice. However, if you were advised to take out the endowment before April 1988, see 'Was the advice regulated?'.

Hope this is useful!

221b

Here's what I composed and it worked for me!

Feel free to use where it relates to your case. Sorry again for long delay.

Good luck!

221b

Please click scales if useful!

22nd October 2006

Dear Sir /Madam

Re ************ Mortgage Endowment Plan

Policy number ********

I should like to make a complaint about the above endowment which was mis-sold to me on April 18th 1998.

This is for the reasons listed below:

• This being my first mortgage, I was naturally very ‘green’ about the various options open to me. I trusted my ‘advisor’, Mike ******** as having my best interests at heart.

• I did not at any time realise that he was on commission for selling me an endowment - I was given to understand that he was employed by ******* Estate Agents as their mortgage advisor, to give advice, not steer me towards the policy that would provide him with the most commission. I have since found out even more alarmingly that Mr ******* was in fact, a tied agent with ******** Life and not the independent I was led to believe by ******** Estate Agents and indeed Mr ******** himself.

• The alternatives of repayment mortgages and others were dismissed by the advisor pretty much instantly as ‘not what people were doing these days’; indeed he implied that people were ‘stuck’ with repayment mortgages and that they were a very old-fashioned way of paying off one’s mortgage and that the track record of endowments was glowing compared to traditional mortgages. I was most definitely steered towards an endowment mortgage as the best possible option for me.

• I was given no projected figures for a repayment mortgage, not even for one lender and did not get the impression at all that Mr ******** was ‘shopping around’ on my behalf. Mr ******** was required to give me 'best advice'. If the best advice for me was to choose an endowment mortgage, this should be demonstrated by the various documents that he needed to complete, and which should be held on my endowment file. Having reviewed the file, I can find absolutely no evidence of this.

• I believe he took advantage of the fact that I was under a time pressure as the house I wanted to purchase was going to be auctioned in 3 ½ weeks if my sale wasn’t tied up before then.

• He did not even shop around for me within the confines of an endowment mortgage, I was presented with ********* Life as being the best possible option for me without being shown any facts to back this up, nor was it compared with other lenders’ projections.

• The projections I was furnished with for ******** were geared towards a growth rate of 7.5%. I feel that this growth rate was extremely inflated compared to the FOS’s medium growth rate.

• Indeed Mr ********* boasted that not only would my endowment pay off my mortgage, but it would give me a nice tidy lump sum left over at the end, not dissimilar to a ‘with profits’ insurance policy. The only problem I would have, he assured me would be deciding what to spend the big lump sum on!

• At no point did he even discuss the possibility that the policy might not pay off the mortgage; it was all very rosily painted. He should have told me that the amount I would get back depended on the performance of the policy, and discussed carefully the fund(s) in which I invested. He was in fact quite bullish about the likely performance of the endowment. He also claimed that 'no endowment has ever failed to pay off a mortgage'.

• I don’t feel Mike ******** established my attitude to risk fully. He asked it in an offhand way; “how do you feel about investments generally”? I stated that I had no investments at that point and that I didn’t want anything too risky, but that my experience was extremely limited; not-existent in fact. Bearing in mind that I didn’t want anything too risky, I should have been steered directly away from an endowment mortgage and towards a repayment option. It was never suggested that the endowment option was in fact a risky product. In fact if Mr ******* had probed further, he would have concluded that I was in fact risk averse, illustrated by my other savings I had at the time I took out the mortgage - Building Society savings accounts and an insurance ‘with profits’ style policy, no shares or other risky investment funds.

In conclusion, I have lost out considerably financially as a result of Mr ********* appalling lack of customer care in mis-selling the endowment to me in the first place. This is because he failed to explain the risks involved with endowments, or to go through all the other options with me carefully. He made no attempt to establish my attitude to risk. Also he said the policy would provide a lump sum after repaying the mortgage, and exaggerated heavily the track record of endowments.

I look forward to hearing back from you along with the appropriate level of compensation as recommended by the FSA - by you comparing the current value of the endowment with the amount of capital that the I would have repaid had a repayment mortgage been recommended to me and refunding me the difference as compensation.

Yours faithfully

***** *****

Endowment Mis-selling

********** Life (UK) Limited

********** Way

Basingstoke

Hampshire

RG21 6SZ

Hi

This is my first post. I felt I had to join in as the post from 221b is so useful.

I have recently sent a basic letter of complaint and recieved a quetionaire asking for details of the meetings held between myself and the advisor. your letter assisted me with this and I was able to recall and re-word your letter to suit. Many thanks. your post also gave me the confidence to pursue the claim, as you have informed me how to.

An excellent site

if only life was simple

Good luck, Phil.

Glad to be of help. This site (and the people who make it what it is, obviously) has helped me tremendously, so it's a pleasure to help other folk out in turn...

Let us know how you get on.

221b

Hi I felt compelled to join in this thread as I currently work in the Financial Services industry, have been previously qualified to give financial advice, sold some endowment policies in a past life and now assist all of my friends, neighbours, colleagues etc in submitting Endowment Complaints.

"We" have sucessfully claimed money back from most of the big lenders and some of the little ones. The best offer was over £30k from L&G and was for a friends mum who was sold a 25yr endowment policy when she was 50 and working part time in a supermarket!

It helps to know which companies apply which rules and I have worked for many of them. DO not be put off if your policy was sold prior to April 1988 (the date the FS Act came into force) Lots of companies still uphold complaints from pre April '88.

Post any specific questions here as I may be able to help.

Dawn:oops:

Hi, does anyone know of a calculator we could use to work out (roughly) the possible figure. I understand that the sum is the diference between the policy value and what would have been paid off if a repayment mortgage had been used. as we know that it is mostly intersest that is paid of initialy how can we get a figure. ie say I have a 35k mortgage and a policy value of 8k at 10yrs, but I cant work out, had I had a repayment what I would owe now.

Unfortunately it's not quite as simple as that because fairly complex calculations software is used and it depends on the interest rates you have paid on your mortgage. On a £35k mortgage over 25 years at 5% (assuming the 5% is fixed which is V unlikely) you would have paid off circa,

£3,997 after 5 years

£9,122 after 10 years

£15,710 after 15 years

£24,159 after 20 years

The amount you would have paid off is then compared to the current Surrender Value (SV) of your policy and if the amount you would have paid off is more than the SV you would be offered the difference.

Here's one I did recently as an example.

Mortgage taken out in August 1988 for £45,000 over 25 years.

Current SV of policy £17,500

Amount that would have been paid had it been a C&I mortgage £23,700

SV minus capital that would have been repaid = £17,500 - £ £23,700 = A LOSS OF £6,200.

My friends were offered this £6,200 (which we managed to get increased to £7,500 as we asked for actual rates to be taken into account rather than the building society using their standard rates).

The idea then is that they would surrender the endowment policy to get the £17,500 they would add this to the £7,500 offerred which totals £25,000 and they then pay this amount off their mortgage.

This would technically leave them in the same position they would have been in (i.e. they would be left with a £20K mortgage) had they taken a repayment (C&I) mortgage from that start. They now need to switch to a repayment mortgage over the remaining 7 years and are free to negotiate a new rate with which ever lender they choose.

It's worth noting the following points.

The ins co MUST offer to pay reasonable costs of switching, i.e if the building society impose a charge for changing you can claim it back.

Also...very important. The Ins Co must offer you repalcement life assurance for the remaining balance at the rates you would have been given at that start. The concern here is supposing you had an incurable illness or poor health that had developed since the original endowment was started, on surrendering your Endowment policy and switching to a repayment mortgage to finish your mortgage off you would technically be without Life Assurance as the policy would have been surrendered.

If you were in ill health you would find it virtually impossible to get replacment cover from another provider as you would be classed as a bad risk. As a result the Insurer MUST offer you replacment cover for the balance at the original rates. NO underwriting would be required and No health checks would be needed.

Also if at any point since starting your endowment policy you have reduced the balance of your mortagage, the ins co would base all thir figures on how much you actually owe now not how much you originally borrowed. This is a bit unfair as technically you are being penalised for paying some of your mortgage off.

Also if you have already converted to a C&I mortgage, your Ins Co will only pay compensation up to the point that you switched as they assume that you would have switched when you realsied there was a problem with the policy and therfore you should have complained at that time.

Cant obviously advise anyone but if you failed to mention in your complaint correspondence that you have converted to C&I the ins co would not be able to find this out, you can draw your own conclusion from that!.

One other point.....Never own up to having any stockmarket related investments, PEPS or shares as this would indicate that you are financially aware and would therefore give the INS Co a reason not to pay out. On the whole most do pay out in the end.

Hope all this rambling has helped a bit.

Dawn

Try this link to put your amount and your interest rates in. It will give you approximate figures for repayment amounts.

Mortgage repayment | Calculators | Guardian Unlimited Money

Dawn

Dear Mum of 3

You seem to know about mortgages can you or anyone advise complained to Barclays 2004 thay basically said **** *** my father in law died shortly before and I wan't well I phoned barclays and they said thats it so I left it.

Now 2 years down the line I tried again they said the same but I could go to ombuds which I have they have looked into it and basically said they couldn't look into it because its over 2 years since I originally complained any advice

Maria:-x

Hi Mumofthree,

May I say a very many thanks to you, you have given me a rough idea of any money's worth fighting for. Based on your calculations sadly not a lot. but I like a good fight plus anything in my bank is better than in theirs.

thanks again

Hi Maria

It really depends on what you said in your complaint the first time round.

If you raise new issues on a 2nd complaint then they would have to start again from scratch and treat the new issues raised as a totally separate new complaint.

If you can tell me a brief summary of the points you made in your complaint, I may be able to suggest a different line of complaint that you may not have thought of.

I don't think that Barclays are time barring (this means you have to complain within 3 years of the shortfall being brought to your attention by way of a letter) If they are timebarring, you may now be caught out by the timebarr rules and therefore too late to complain.

Do not give up yet.

WMof3