The phone rings from a friend of a small client with whom there has been no contact for years. She has MS and is now in a wheelchair. Advice is needed about a mis-sold endowment – fortunately not one of mine and a Power of Attorney is mentioned. A long conversation results in the friend bringing a bag of stuff to our meeting including the original Power of Attorney, the correspondence relating to the endowment and its investment performance plus original identification etc for the friend concerned.
Finally, being happy that the friend can act for my client it is time to go through the correspondence which has a RED warning about the underperformance of the endowment. Main problem is that the premiums to achieve the target amount of the original mortgage were calculated on an assumed average growth rate of 10.5 per cent a year. No problem with a spurt of a few years at that rate but for 25 years, a bit of a rarity now People have forgotten how popular and good these investments were when they were maturing in the 1990s sometimes after achieving an average growth rate of up to 17 per cent a year! No complaints about mis-selling then.
The deadline for endowment complaints is well past but with an illness like MS, perhaps an exception can be made? Further reading shows extensive correspondence with a claims specialist and a long reply. Claims for mis-selling have succeeded where the broker has sold something and the file does not show the audit trail and process showing its suitability. If it is the word of the client against the advisor, then the client will probably have the benefit of the doubt.
But unlike many clients who never read the Key Features and other stuff, the correspondence shows that the client asked a long list of questions to the original broker which were all answered. This scuppers any chance of making a case for mis-selling, even if the long past deadline were ignored.
The legal word for this is Estoppel which remained deep in my brain decades after coming across it in my Banking Diploma. Legal people here and maybe some Scrabble players will understand what estoppel is, but ordinary folk can be excused. What is it?
Best Burgers in London?
A pub carpark in south London seems a highly unlikely location for great hamburgers but Radio 4 Food Programme suggests that it is and Yianni is the guy here. He has done his homework visiting the best burger places in the USA and only cooks them 4 at a time. People queue up to 90 minutes for the privilege of tasting them but probably not Del Boy of Only Fools and Horses.
QWERTY & Dvorak
Staying with BBC Radio 4 Stephen Fry’s The trial of QWERTY sounds a worthy 30 minutes after typing the relevant characters in with my QWERTY keyboard. Does anyone sell or use the 30 per cent quicker DVORAK one developed in the 1930s?
What recession?
The property market in the West End and Docklands is buzzing where an estate agent friend receives 2,500 new enquiries in 4 weeks, private client solicitors are really busy and a school chum who sells stuff for old cars and lorries has 40 per cent more sales than same time last year.
History Repeats Itself
If you fancy yourself an expert on computers this article from Cerebrux will either teach you something or induce a little modesty. Duel of the Titans or what?
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