Brief history of the endowment, Bought house on 1st July 1988 with endowment mortgage (I will not name the mortgage lender, as it could get complicated). Since bought another house, changing lender, but still keeping this endowment to pay off half of the present mortgage. My wife and myself were sold an endowment each, but were not married at the time.
Early 2004 received an update on the endowment for years 2002 and
2003(had not received an update in 2002 and 2003, after complaining, the company investigated and accepted they were at fault for not sending them out). On receiving the 2002 update, it was showing a shortfall, not a great deal, but it was a shortfall. Recently received the 2004 update and the shortfall is increasing.End of July 2004 wrote off to the firm with my complaint and also asking for a copy of my endowment file. I received a questionaire, regarding one policy, they mislaid the letter regarding the other policy, but no copy off my endowment file. I have now received acknowledgement of a complaint for both policies and the original Ordinary Life Proposal forms for both policies.
As I said before both the endowment policies have a start date of 1st July 1988 (this is shown on the two schedules for the policies, which I have), but on the proposals they have just sent, they have an entry date of 1st November 1987, which has been crossed out and the new date added under Endorsements and Special Terms of Acceptance. Also Gross Premium, Sum Assured and Table have been crossed out and added for a new amount under Endorsements, which relates to what I am paying now.
This has got me thinking back to the problems that we had back in
1988. I was 20 and my wife was 18 and were both very nieve as regards finances back then and believed what we were told by a financial advisor. An agent of this company sold us each a savings plan in 1987 as he called it, which would when we bought a house be used as a deposit. But It was an endowment plan and this deposit would be a loan on the endowment. Fast forward to when we bought the house in 1988 and buying the house and that is when problems surfaced. This company (local district office, spoke to district manager) denied that it was taken out to be used as a deposit (even threatened to remove me from his office by calling the police, along with an independent witness when complaining) until I mentioned that my signature had been forged on the proposal form on my policy. There was a swift refund of money paid in and I was told that the endowment(savings plan!) would be redone. After receiving copies of these original proposal forms, they seem to have used the original policy numbers which have been re-issued as new policies in 1988 and the form in my name still has the forged signature. I thought that these would have been destroyed at the time. The agent was dismissed a few years later after it was reported in the local paper that he had been forging signatures with other peopleConsidering how much we were paying into these two policies there would not have been a problem affording a repayment mortgage. But we were never offered a repayment mortgage.
I'm just wondering which way now to progress this complaint, as in my opinion we were mis-sold the policies. It seems that the head office of this company did not know what went on. Do I just disclose everything, to the company concerned as these proposal forms have now just opened a bag of worms.
Hope that someone can give me some advice and understand why I will not name the company concerned.