Showing posts with label equitable life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label equitable life. Show all posts

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Equitable Life Sale Pulled

Equitable Life Sale Pulled

Equitable Life has pulled the sale of its £7BN with-profits fund having failed to find a buyer. The reason cited being the current market turmoil.

Equitable Life will put the fund into "run-off", ie the policies will run until they mature.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Equitable Life

Equitable Life

The long suffering, and shockingly mistreated, investors in Equitable Life may be slightly cheered by a report in today's Telegraph that says:

"Prudential, Legal & General and Swiss Re are among a pack of insurance giants circling Equitable Life, Britain's oldest mutual insurer.

Equitable has drawn up a shortlist of bidders for the remnants of the former insurance leader, which at its peak was worth £26bn and had 1.5m policyholders.

News of prospective bids for the business comes ahead of this week's publication of a damning report by Ann Abraham, the Parliamentary Ombudsman, who will criticise the Government for its failure to regulate the society properly in the lead-up to its near collapse
."

The purchase, if it comes, will take some time. Therefore, whilst the investors are waiting for the outcome of that, they should mount a class action against the government for its maladministration of one of the biggest scandals to shake Britain's financial services industry.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Without Profits

Without Profits

Those hapless with profits endowment policy holders have good reason to make a claim against the life assurance companies for false description of their products. The recent poor results from these companies show that these policies should be refereed to as "without profits".

Money Management magazine has identified a number of "stellar" under performers:
  • Monthly premiums of £50 paid into a London Life with profits endowment for the past 10 years (ie £6000) would have a generated a payout of £5,544. Why not just set fire to your money instead?

    Other 10 year policies paying out less than was paid in include Equitable Life, Pearl and Royal Life.


  • In 1998, the average 25 year endowment policy paid £105,540 on a £50 per month premium. In 2003, the average payout was £65,776. Now the average 25 year policy pays out £45,330.


  • Thirty five insurers are paying lower payouts on 25 year policies compared with this time last year.
With profits is a misleading term, many of the life assurance companies should be sued for misleading their hapless customers.

Monday, May 14, 2007

The List of Shame

The List of Shame

Those of us who are unfortunate enough to have bought an endowment policy in the late 1980's and early 1990's may find an analysis produced by Money Management to be of interest.

It shows that, despite rising stock markets, payouts to policy holder continue to fall in most cases.

They compared policies maturing in 2007 with those maturing in 2006, for a male non smoker investing £50 from the outset over 25 years. The variation in returns was staggering. The average growth rate was 8.5%.

The top performer was Reliance Mutual with a return of 13.6%. However, the laggards showing below average returns were as follows (%):

Norwich Union - 8.3
Canada Life - 8.3
CGU - 8.2
General Accident - 8.2
Brittanic Assurance - 8.2
Clerical Medical - 7.9
Legal&General - 7.7
Scottish Widows - 7.3
Scottish Life - 7.2
Standard Mutual - 6.8
Scottish Mutual - 6.8
Friends Provident - 6.7
Equitable Life - 6.5
Eagle Star - 5.7

Well done!

The key question that policy holders should be asking of their endowment company, if they are in one of the under performing ones, is why are your returns worse than others?

Does that not reflect badly on the quality of management, and on the charges levied against the fund?