[Previous entry: "Updated index for: Regulations"] [Next entry: "Updated index for: Precipice bonds"]

03/01/2005: "Updated index for: Endowments"

Submission to the Treasury Committee on mortgage endowments
Suggested lines of questioning for industry witnesses before the House of Commons Treasury Committee in July 2003 examining mortgage endowments - including an explanation of how mispricing of the premiums set by life companies (their responsibility, not advisers') made misselling inevitable and endemic.

Mortgage endowments: what went wrong, why and what lessons to learn
This extract from No Monkey Business explains the risks trying to build up an investment fund to meet a liability in money terms at a fixed future date: at most homeowners' required certainty, the appropriate rate of savings (or 'premium') would have made them transparently unappealing. This is a scandal to lay at the door of insurance company chiefs and actuaries, not salesmen. Mortgage endowments are also a special case of the general problems associated with with-profits.