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Guide to Endowments

This guide explains the two traps where policyholders are being cheated out of millions a year. The guide focuses on why selling your endowment policy is better than surrendering and dealing with an endowment mis-selling claim. We aim to get you THOUSANDS OF POUNDS EXTRA which YOU ARE ENTITLED TO either because you were mis-sold your endowment policy by the sales agent and/or because you are now being penalised for surrendering your policy early.

Even if you have already submitted your policy details on other web sites, reading this page could save you a great deal of time and net you thousands of pounds more.

Why YOU ARE entitled to extra money.

For the past few years the National Press have been educating the public regarding two serious injustices that are occurring with endowment policies, these injustices continue to cost policyholders dearly, often many thousands of pounds and are bourne of ignorance!

The first injustice that the Press brought to the public’s attention was the financial penalties which Life Offices are charging when endowment policyholders surrender their policies. As an established market developed with endowment buyers who are willing to pay a great deal more than the Surrender Value, Life Offices were required by The Financial Services Authority (F.S.A) - the governments’ regulatory body - to explain to endowment policyholders, when they surrender their polices, that they’re very likely to get a better offer by selling to an endowment policy buyer – known in the industry as Market Makers. In some cases Market Makers offer as much as 40% more than the surrender value for the endowment policy.

More recently the Media has started a new campaign educating the public that they were mis-sold their endowment policies. In many cases the Agents selling those endowment policies did not either make the buyer aware of all the risks and pitfalls, the possible mortgage alternatives or they did not conduct a review of the clients’ financial situation. The F.S.A has had significant success with helping those endowment policyholders who were mis-sold their endowments seek financial compensation for this mis-selling.

The two services we offer to endowment policyholders are:

1)   If you wish to sell your endowment policy we can broker your policy to the widest range of endowment buyers to obtain the best offer for your endowment policy whilst at the same time issuing a mis-selling claim and because we can deal with both at the same time we save you an extra wait of up to ten weeks. We can help even if the endowment policy is not in your name any more, such as when it was sold or surrendered or even if the policy matured.

2)  If you do not wish to sell your endowment policy, we can organise just an endowment mis-selling claim on your behalf.

                                                Click here to submit your policy >>

Surrendering you policy – Always investigate the market value

Good advice is to Never Surrender a With-Profit endowment policy without first establishing its market value. Life Offices - the company which sold you your endowment policy - differ in the way they consider surrendered policies. Whilst some will offer a fair value for your policy, very often life offices put a penalty on a customer who wants to surrender early. This means that the policyholder will not get the best value for their policy when surrendering. Even if the life office makes an offer without a penalty, our service could offer you more value for your policy as explained next….

Buyers of endowment policies take a different view when considering how much they want to pay for a policy. They look at the earning potential of the policy within a balanced policy portfolio. We market your policy to the known endowment policy buyers, this ensures we get a realistic offer for your policy, the difference between the surrender value and our offer has been a staggering 40%. Our successful methods when offering your endowment policy to the market is not the fire and forget approach applied by some “brokers” but rather an iterative process where we will negotiate between interested buyers to get you the best offer.

Endowment Mis-selling - You most likely have a valid claim

 

Most members of the public are not financial experts nor are most endowment policyholders either. When the sales agent sold you your endowment policy, for which they received an enormous commission, they likely said it was ‘safe' and is guaranteed as an ultimate mortgage repayment. The point raised by the Regulator however is they that should have explained all the risks and inquired as to whether you have the means to cover yourself in case the premiums went up or the policy value dropped.

The performance of endowment policies is tied into the stock market and the general economy, either directly as with Unit Linked Policies or indirectly through bonuses applied to the With-Profit policy.  The net result is that there are very few policies which can still payback the mortgage once the policy finishes resulting in millions of policies mis-sold! Those sales agents that did not explain the risks and its outcomes, lower yearly bonuses, lower policy values, or increased premiums will have mis-sold you the policy. If this is the case with you, and it most likely is, then you have a right to claim redress for not being given the right advice. The best way for us to ensure your claim for redress is valid, is for you to fill out our form and let us make a free mis-selling assessment for you.

Selling your Policy – Is your endowment policy tradable?

The market in (SHEPS) Second Hand Endowment Policies or Traded Endowment Polices (TEPS) deals exclusively with a type of endowment policy known as “With-Profits”. To know whether your endowment policy is “With Profits” look at the last bonus statement, if it mentions units it is probably a Unitised or Unit Linked policy, if bonuses are in sterling and there is no mention of units then it is probably a traditional With-Profits. The other types of policies - “Unit Linked” and “Unitised With Profits” have a performance factor which is dependent directly on current investment market conditions, these are not tradable as there is no real buyers market for them, in most cases there is likely to be a mis-selling claim which you are entitled to.

Making a mis-selling claim – Why use our service and can you do it yourself?

We offer a free appraisal service on a no-win, no-fee business basis and a competitive fee of one quarter of the payment you receive for successfully handling the whole endowment mortgage complaints process, there are no hidden fees or charges (in some cases our service may be VAT exempt). We are amongst the market leaders in mis-selling advisory services. Our advisory service has become one of the leading independent professional advisers in this field. The “Do-It-Yourself” approach suggested by some organisations over simplifies the situation and we believe encourages you to take needless risks which may result in your case facing unnecessary rejection. Generally you can only make one complaint, so many DIY claims fail through lack of knowledge, make sure it is as successful as possible by using the experience of our advisory services. Don’t delay as some claims have a time limit on mis-selling complaints.

Selling the policy to the market – why use our brokerage service?

Not all policy buyers or brokers who advertise on the internet or in the media are the same.

Most if not all buyers of endowment policies who you receive direct offers from will be buying their policies on behalf of institutional investors, private investors or sales lists. Those institutions (banks, investment companies) or individuals each have a specific set of policies they are interested in, which together achieve a balanced policy portfolio.

What this means is that once the policy purchaser has fulfilled its quota of a specific policy type they will stop buying that policy type. Even if you have a policy which is highly tradable, by going direct to only one or two policy purchasers you are not ensuring you get an offer at all and even if you do get an offer it may be that you could have received a higher offer had you offered your policy to the entire market.

Similarly not all brokers are the same either. Some brokers will only deal with a few policy buyers whom they have got to know over time whilst other brokers are financial advisors who deal in a number of financial products besides endowments and don’t know the market at all well.

Finally nearly all policy buyers who buy direct and most policy brokers do not deal with endowment mis-selling, a major cash bonus which you could very well be entitled to and could be worth thousands of pounds, on average £2,600 compensation.

We are a brokerage that offers your policy to the full range of policy buyers. This guarantees you the greatest interest in your policy, which in turn should get you the best value offer. Our teams are split up into three groups. The first only deals with selling endowment policies, a dedicated second team deals strictly with endowment mis-selling and a third team deals with replacement insurance cover and mortgages. Each team is independent and all are experts in their line of business with years of experience in their field. In total our teams have sold millions of pounds of Policies and claimed redress of over 15 million pounds, with years of experience in the market we know how best to claim redress and/or trade your Policy, so why go to anyone else.

Using an IFA to sell your policy – Does he understand endowment trading\claiming?

Most IFAs (Independent Financial Advisers) have limited experience of selling their clients policies to the market and little or no experience of endowment mis-selling claims. In the case of selling their client policies, the IFA makes the fundamental mistake of only offering the policy to one or two policy buyers. If the IFA uses a trawler (a service which policy purchasers subscribe to, to bid on policies from the public) an additional percentage commission is generally factored in, which again means that you lose out. IFAs generally don’t know half the policy buyers in market and their experience of the detailed legal after-sales process will be very limited. An IFA that does not have the experience will often take longer dealing with the after sales process. When claiming for mis-selling using your local IFA can be very risky as he\she probably has no experience and you generally have one chance to claim. We are an IFA team dedicated for the past five years to selling endowments and negotiating the best value offer for our clients and now the past few years claiming redress for endowment mis-selling. To date we successfully dealt with thousands of policies. We have excellent relations with all the policy buyers in the market.

It follows that our experience of the after sales process, its legalities and speeding up the stages of the transfer of ownership is impeccable. On mis-selling claims our expertise is unsurpassed.
 

Endowment Brokers is a trading style of Zucker Associates Limited is regulated by the Financial Services Authority.
Any offers within this site do not represent personalised advice and are on an execution only basis.
Always consult a professional independent adviser if in doubt.