UK ENDOWMENT COMPLAINT LETTER
SHORTFALL CLAIMS
We are a specialist firm dealing with claims for underperforming insurance policies which have been miss sold by a life company, broker or solicitor. We operate on a no win no fee basis and our claims are completely risk free. We guarantee that if you do not receive compensation then you will not be charged a penny. If you have received a 'Red' or 'Amber' letter from your life assurance company indicating that your policy is at risk of a shortfall and you would like free advice without obligation on the content of an endowment complaint letter then just use the phone number or complete the contact form and an expert insurance actuary who is registered by the Financial Services Authority will give free advice without any further obligation.
The first step in making an endowment claim after all of the relevant information has been gathered is to send a formal letter of complaint to the firm who sold the policy of insurance which in most cases will be an insurance company or an insurance broker. In some cases the claim may be against a firm of solicitors if they had an in house insurance brokerage. The letter will relate to the advice that you were given prior to purchasing the policy in order to substantiate an allegation of miss selling. There is little point in going into the actual financial losses at this stage as the formal complaint letter is being written as a result of receipt of a red letter from the insurers warning of mortgage shortfall. The actual calculation of losses will be made at a later stage once miss selling has been proved or admitted by the insurer.
The basic information which will be needed to draft a satisfactory letter of complaint will include the following :-
- endowment policy number
- date when the endowment policy was sold to you
- name and address of company who employed the adviser who sold you the policy
- name of insurance company with whom you have your endowment policy
- the target amount at the time
Not every complaint is upheld either by the insurance company or the Financial Ombudsman on appeal and many are rejected however a substantial, detailed and accurate letter of application containing all of the relevant grounds of the application will greatly assist the claim. An applicant also need to think about whether poor advice was given and in order to justify the complaint there needs to be allegations of miss selling and a number of questions need to be answered by the applicant to substantiate the allegations. It is likely the company will in due course ask for more information once they start to investigate the claim. Upon receipt of a red letter the likely questions that will need answering to form the basis of a substantive application are as follows :-
Did whoever sold you the endowment policy advise you on the following:
- the fact that an endowment policy might not pay off the mortgage
- the other alternative methods of repaying a mortgage
- that an endowment policy is a long-term investment that might give a low return if cashed in early
- the fees and charges involved with the policy and how they would affect the return on investment via the endowment policy
- the risks of investment in the stock market and that the value of investments can go down as well as up
- how the term of the endowment policy related to the mortgage term and especially if the policy was due to run to retirement
If the following applies then details should be included in the application :-
- advise was given to stop any existing endowment policy to take out another one.
- advise was given with regard to actually requiring the life insurance cover especially if you were single at the time of being sold the policy.
