I plan to cash in my Standard Life endowment policy but, since I don't need the money urgently, have decided to hang on until they demutualise to benefit from the free share entitlement. However, I just received an e-mail from an endowment trading company with the following statement:
"We have been asked by many Standard Life policyholders if they can sell their policies and still be eligible for any benefits if the life office demutualises. We have put this question to Standard Life and we were delighted that they have commented, as set out below:-
"...the assignor (policyholder who sells their policy) will be eligible for any demutualisation entitlement as they were the member/owner at the time of the Company announcement." (17th October 2005)"
That sounds great - apparently I could go ahead and sell now and still benefit from the demutualisation. But this seems to be contradicted by Standard Life's own web site which states that one of the requirements for eligibility is that the policy "is still in force on the day of the Special General Meeting held to vote on demutualisation planned for May or June 2006."
I'll try to contact Standard Life to clarify the situation, but does anyone here know which answer is correct?
Chris