The Endowment Diary

The Devious Tricks of Life Assurance Companies and Banks

It seems that the life assurance companies and banks that sold us our useless and underperforming endowment policies, are doing their very best to avoid paying compensation.

That is at least the view of the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

It seems that our "professional friends" in the life assurance companies and banks are ignoring guidelines, set down 3 years ago, as to how to handle endowment complaints.

The FOS will receive 70000 complaints this year, relating to endowment policies; in 2003 the FOS received 50000, and in 2002 they received 15000.

Needless to say, as I warned on this site over a year ago, the sheer volume of the complaints means that the FOS is having trouble processing them.

Delays of over a year are now standard, and indeed the FOS is having to "farm out" the processing to third parties.

One of the little "tricks" employed by the banks and life assurance companies, according to the FOS, is to make the complainant wait for 8 weeks before responding.

Apparently, the "professionals" believe that if they ignore the problem it will simply go away, like a bad dream.

My message to the banks and life assurance companies is simple:

-The problem won't go away

-The problem will get worse

-People are becoming angry

-Grow up, stop avoiding the issue and address the problem.