Endowment plans were very popular in the past mainly because there were hardly any options available in the market. The popularity of such policies could also have been because of the guaranteed returns assured by the insurance providers. But with time this type of policy has lost its popularity with so many players in the market and new innovative products have taken over the insurance industry by surprise.
Since it is an endowment plan, in case you survive the tenure of the policy, an amount equivalent to the sum insured plus the accumulated bonuses is payable to you. If you expire during the tenure of the policy, the sum insured plus the accumulated bonuses is payable to the nominee or beneficiary. Special feature of the plan is that even on survival the policy holder is payable by the insurance company. This means that the plan is beneficial in both ways which is not the case in any other term policies.
You have no idea where the money is being invested and how much and so on. Each year the insurance companies declare bonuses and these bonuses are nothing but the profit earned on investments made after deducting the administrative expenses of the insurance companies. Here also there is lack of transparency because you as the policy holder have no idea about how much the company has earned out of the investments made and what are the administrative and other expenses of the investing company. So basically the policy holder has to accept whatever the insurance company offers to pay. The insurer has monopoly position over the policy holders here.
The plan has a competition now, with private players in the market Unit Linked Plan has been introduced.
The premium for Endowment Plan is significantly higher than any other type of Term life insurance plans for the same amount of sum assured because it is insurance plus investment plan clubbed together offering a wider option to the consumers. Therefore individuals should be aware of the value that endowment plans bring to their financial and insurance portfolio, then bend down to buy one.
Do you have an endowment policy that you hope will eventually pay off your mortgage? If you do there is a very good chance that it might not be sufficient to repay your mortgage at the end of its natural term.
And if you have recently received a Red Letter from your endowment mortgage lender then you will already certainly know! So what do you do now? You must act promptly to ensure you can meet the potential shortfall when your endowment matures.
If this applies to you too, you do have a right to make a complaint, providing that you do something about it and complain within three years of receiving your first Red Letter.
They should then give you an official complaints procedure that you should follow.
In Britain you can also discuss the matter with the Citizen's Advice Bureau and you can visit their website at www.citizensadvice.org.uk or you can try the Financial Services Authority, their web site is www.fas.gov.uk/consumer.
If you reside outside the United Kingdom and suspect you have the same problem, the first thing you must do is to check if the endowment policy you have will be sufficient to cover your mortgage when it matures. If you find that it isn't, then make sure that you do something about it now before it is too late, and thus ensure that you don't have a serious problem somewhere further down the line.
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selling an endowment policy.
