Endowment Policy/Mortgage. Has anyone made a complaint successfully in Ireland?

I've had quite a few private exchanges with people who've been following this thread and something has come up more than once which might offer a more insidious reason why people almost always seem to get fobbed off or ignored for long periods of time when they make their first complaint to the bank or whomever sold them an endowment policy.

If there's sufficient weasel wording in the fine print in any warning letter or note in a letter from the institution you may be caught out by the Statute of Limitations which will only allow you six years from the date of said letter to initiate legal action.

Now we know Bank of Ireland lost in court and it's unlikely the couple that sued them received anything less than the standard letters all their other endowment customers received so I may be over cautious raising this flag. But at least two people I know of have been cautioned about this aspect by the firm of solicitors that toasted BoI and may as a a consequence have seriously weakened cases depending on how the courts might interpret the "warnings". It may be that if the winning couple had similar warnings the text may not be robust enough.

The purpose of this posting is to suggest you get legal advice sooner rather than later and if the institution are prevaricating now you know one reason why it's in their interests to run the clock down - passively or otherwise.

FYI another recurring recommendation from long drawn out experience in a number of cases is skip past the ombudsman. Unless you took out the policy in the last six years- you'll waste precious time. Of course it's unlikely anyone took a policy out in the last six years but if they did, they'd have the benefit of the Statute of Limitations on their side.......

pinkjackie wrote: »

Just to let ye all know I spoke with Bryan fox, Solicitor today. He informed me that I was wasting my time, and would have absolutely no cause under the "Statute of Limitations". Unless you can prove that you were mis-sold this mortgage in the last six years, or that you didn't receive any correspondence from the Bank in the previous six years warning you that there might be a risk of a shortfall, then there is no point in pursuing legal action because it would be thrown out of court.

If I had taken legal action when I first got the letters from the Bank warning of a shortfall then I would have had a case, but it is too late now. So, I guess there is nothing left for us only pay up!!

I know how frustrating this is to hear but don't give up too quickly. Rest assured there is nothing just or fair about the way endowment policy holders have been treated in Ireland especially when compared to the UK. We apparently can't do the class action thing here so proceedings issue on a case by case basis and you can bet there's a lot of backlog. No doubt Bryan Fox's advice re the Statue of Limitations applies to many of us but I suggest you go back over every scrap of correspondence you got from the Insurance company and anyone in your bank that had anything to do with selling and administering the policy. You may find inconsistencies between what you were told and what your mortgage holding branch were told. Scrutinize statements from the Life assurance company and ask your mortgage branch for copies of the statements they'd have received. Look for any discrepancies that might giv you a toehold that relates to something other than mis-selling.

It's apparent the life assurance companies have deliberately decided to ignore complaints as long as possible to catch people out with the statute of Limitations which is why I've recommended people do not hang about with getting legal advice. My own experience with Lifetime was they took almost a year to respond and then with a succession of stonewalling responses to push out past the statute limit.

You emailing Eddie Hobbs new program is another good idea - I'll do so myself right now. It's definitely a case of "do nothing - get nothing"!

Agreed the Ombudsman is a waste of time for older policy complaints - his remit seems to have been carefully written to shield the financial companies. However you may for example find you can complain about how your complaint has been handled or any aspect other than mis-selling/underperformance which may at least give you some leverage/satisfaction.

I wonder if the legislation hadn't been biased to protect the institutions that mis-sold defective endowment policies and absolve them of accountability, would our current financial crisis be as bad?

phormium wrote: »

Are you really sure your family member knew it was a no good policy? I worked in banking during the years endowments were popular and at branch level anyway where I worked we were not aware of any big con going on.

At the particular time in my branch there were 3 staff members taking out mortgages, the manager, myself and another male member of staff. Both the manager and the other guy went for endowments, I went for annuity. They both fully believed in them, me being of a very cynical nature in general and very risk adverse did not want to take any chances with my mortgage, we used to have many heated discussions over this, they could not understand my reluctance. Now I didn't know anything more than they did, I just am very conservative. They were both 100% happy with the product based on what they had been told and proceeded to sell endowments to many customers, I also sold endowment mortgages and fully explained it to customers based on what we had been told.

Just to add, they both subsequently switched to annuity mortgages when it became clear the endowments were not performing as expected, both also kept on the endowment policy separately, don't know what the outcome was.

I know there probably was serious mis-selling of these in some cases but not all bankers knew there was going to be such a problem with them in the future.

Fair play for a very honest contribution. I agree most staff believed they were selling a genuine product and also that they were selling it as they were told and trained to sell it. But there were lots of highly qualified and remunerated people involved in designing the offering who got it wrong. It happens, just like in the car industry. Normally mistakes are acknowledged, sorted out and we move on. That hasn't been the case here.

I don't want to put you on the spot so I'll understand if you'd rather not answer, but could you recall how much -if any- and what sort of warnings were supposed to be impressed on clients about the risk of shortfalls or skyrocketing premiums?
Do you feel in retrospect that the standard sales pitch provided adequate warning to people with no financial background or expertise?