Mortgage endowment survey

The FSA gives firms only a limited time to deal with complaints

Money Box asked a selection of mortgage endowment providers a series of questions regarding their complaint handling process.

The survey questions and providers' responses are listed below, but customers should contact providers directly with individual queries.

These survey results were complied on 17 October, 2003.

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• Abbey Life Assurance Company Limited (Lloyds TSB Group / Scottish Widows)
• AVIVA including Norwich Union / Norwich Union Linked Life Assurance, CGNU
• Barclays PLC / Barclays Life Assurance Company Limited / Woolwich PLC / Woolwich Life Assurance Company Limited
• Equitable Life Assurance Society
• Legal & General Assurance Society Limited
• Prudential
• Winterthur Life
• Zurich including Allied Dunbar Assurance plc and Eagle Star Insurance Group

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  Abbey Life Assurance Company Limited
  (Lloyds TSB Group / Scottish Widows)

  How many endowment complaints have been received in total?

  Scottish Widows: 3750 since June 2002.

  Abbey Life: 9925 from January 2001 to September 2003.

  How many endowment complaints were received in 2001, 2002 and 2003?

  Scottish Widows: there are no stats available for 2001; 1192 from June until December 2002, and 2593 from January 2003 to the end of September 2003.

  Abbey Life: 3256 in 2001, 3280 in 2002, 3389 from January to September 2003.

  How many endowment complaints are currently received each month?

  Scottish Widows: varies from 183 in April 2003, to 483 in September 2003.

  Abbey Life: varies from 114 in August 2003, to 779 in January 2003.

  Are complaints being processed within eight weeks? If not how long is it taking?

  We do not have any cases over eight weeks where Scottish Widows is causing the delay Scottish Widows

  Scottish Widows' preliminary letters are all issued within four weeks, the majority within 10 working days. The only time we do not close a case fully within eight weeks - that is, issue our final decision and payment if necessary - is mainly due to the customer not sending the required information back to us within this period.

  We do not have any cases over eight weeks where Scottish Widows is causing the delay. Abbey Life is currently completing cases within eight to 10 weeks.

  Has your company approached the FSA requesting permission to extend the complaint handling process beyond eight weeks?

  If additional time has been granted what is the new deadline?

  Scottish Widows: n/a - see above.

  Abbey Life: No

  How many complainants have been offered compensation?

  Scottish Widows: 231 cases since October 2000

  Abbey Life: 3570 cases from July 2001 to September 2003.

  What proportion of complainants offered compensation have accepted your initial offer?

  Scottish Widows: unknown. The majority of our customers have accepted our initial offer.

  Abbey Life: approximately 90%.

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  AVIVA including Norwich Union / Norwich Union Linked Life Assurance, CGNU

  How many endowment complaints have been received in total?

  Between 1 January, 2000, and 30 September, 2003, around 15,000 complaints.

  How many endowment complaints were received in 2001, 2002 and 2003?

  2001: 761
  2002: 3051
  2003 ( to 30 September): 11,000

  The majority of complaints are being completed between 13 and 20 weeks AVIVA

  How many endowment complaints are currently received each month?

  Around 1,800 complaints per month.

  Are complaints being processed within eight weeks? If not how long is it taking?

  The majority of complaints are being completed between 13 and 20 weeks. The eight week period is in relation to the FSO referral rights.

  Has your company approached the FSA requesting permission to extend the complaint handling process beyond eight weeks?

  If additional time has been granted, what is the new deadline?

  Yes. The new deadline is 16 weeks, again the note above applies.

  How many complainants have been offered compensation?

  Over last three months 37% of complaints have been upheld.

  What proportion of complainants offered compensation have accepted your initial offer?

  All of them.

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  Barclays PLC / Barclays Life Assurance Company Limited / Woolwich PLC / Woolwich Life Assurance Company Limited

  In terms of endowment complaints handling we believe our service levels and satisfaction rates are high, and an example of this is the fact that, on average, less than one case a month is overturned by the Ombudsman.

  Barclays stopped selling new endowment policies with effect from December 30, 1999. Woolwich in 2001.

  Barclays is not a major player in the endowment market, with market share of only 2%.

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  Equitable Life Assurance Society

  I am sorry, but for the last couple of years, as a matter of policy, the society has not participated in industry surveys.

  This is because surveys require a significant amount of work by specialist staff.

  The issues faced by the society over recent years have put high demands on this limited resource and we have had to prioritise, putting projects which directly benefit members first.

  It may be helpful to note that Equitable Life was never a big provider of endowment mortgage business.

  When the last sweep of red/amber/green letters was issued at the turn of the year, we only had about 9,000 clients with this type of contract.

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  Legal & General Assurance Society Limited

  We cannot give you figures for numbers of complaints, and any compensation paid. Legal & General does not disclose this information.

  We have applied for and been granted a waiver by the FSA to deal with complaints within 16 weeks before giving information to allow customers to refer their complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service if it has not been resolved.

  It takes six months to train a complaint handler to be able to deal with endowment complaints effectively.

  We had resourced our complaints team to deal with the predicted number of complaints that we felt would arise from the endowment review mailing to customers.

  We have a lot of experience of responses to mailings and so can dedicate the appropriate number of people to deal with expected complaint volumes.

  Customers can be reassured that every complaint made will receive a through investigation by Legal & General Legal & General

  However as a result of a significant increase in consumer awareness during the second half of 2002 and early 2003, (one example is the Consumers Association Endowment Action website), we were not able to immediately increase the number of trained staff to accommodate the increase in enquiries over a relatively short period.

  Hence we experienced delays in dealing with endowment complaints.

  We have now completed the training programme for these complaints handling staff.

  It is worth bearing in mind what the complaints investigation process involves.

  The first step is to gather evidence from various parties including the customer, financial adviser, lender and our own records.

  The extent of the information required to assess any complaint can be quite significant as can the complexity of individual cases.

  This explains why some cases take longer than others.

  The second step is to review the evidence and assess the complaint to reach a decision.

  If the complaint is upheld the third step is to decide the appropriate level of compensation if any is due.

  Customers can be reassured that every complaint made will receive a through investigation by Legal & General.

  We apologise to those customers who are frustrated by delays but we will ensure that every single complaint is properly dealt with.

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  Prudential

  In the time we have had we have been able to gather information for 2003 but not the previous years, so all answers relate to 2003.

  How many endowment complaints have been received in total?

  10,189 in 2003

  How many endowment complaints were received in 2001, 2002 and 2003?

  Figures available for 2003 only as above.

  How many endowment complaints are currently received each month?

  About 1,000

  Are complaints being processed within eight weeks? If not how long is it taking?

  If additional time has been granted, what is the new deadline?

  All customers have their complaint acknowledged within eight weeks.

  Currently, of those complaints that are not resolved within eight weeks they can take up to 16 weeks to resolve.

  Has your company approached the FSA requesting permission to extend the complaint handling process beyond eight weeks?

  No. The FSA are fully aware of the steps we're taking to deal with complaints.

  How many complainants have been offered compensation?

  76%.

  What proportion of complainants offered compensation have accepted your initial offer?

  47%. This figure does not include recent offers where we are awaiting a response from the customer.

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  Winterthur Life

  Unfortunately we are unable to provide the requested information at this time.

  Owing to the extremely short timescale to gather the information, less than 24 hours, Winterthur sadly is unable to provide Money Box with the information required on this occasion.

  Winterthur takes its responsibilities to its policyholders very seriously.

  We are committed to providing our policyholders with excellent customer service and to ensuring that they are fully informed to make decisions about their endowment options.

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  Zurich including Allied Dunbar Assurance plc and Eagle Star Insurance Group

  We will not be providing you with the figures you have requested as we have a policy of communicating directly with our customers, not via a third party.

  However, we can confirm that we have committed the necessary resources to resolve these complaints and we continue to work constructively with our regulator on this issue.

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