I've been paying around 148 per month into a Countrywide Assured endowment since June 1992, a total of 18,600. After receiving the usual letter about how it will not meet the target figure (it won't even come close, around 36% shortfall based on 6% returns from now on) I queried the current value of the policy - 14000. And it's not with-profits so no terminal bonuses or anything to look forward to. So over an 11 year period when the FTSE 100 has gone up 60% (and that's *after* the tech bubble, Sep 11th and the Iraq war) my endowment has managed to effectively go *down* 25%.
What I'm wondering is - how does any serious respectable investment company with a multi-million pound 'cautious balanced fund' manage to be so useless that they do worse than the FTSE, worse than a building society account, even worse than I could have done putting the money in a box under the bed, all during one of the greatest boom periods for equities for decades?! Never mind mis-selling, where's the compensation for fund mis-management and mis-investing! Does anyone have an endowment that's done worse? Should we start a cr*p endowment league table?!
------------------------------------------------- JD