Equitable Life Compensation Debacle

Equitable Life Compensation Debacle.

A fifth of Equitable Life policyholders are still yet to be found and paid compensation agreed by the Government.

Criticism has been levied as the National Audit Office found delays and errors in failing to trace around 200,000 policyholders.

Equitable Life collapsed in 2000 following its inability to meet guaranteed annuity rate promises that it had made to both future and current prospective retirees.  

Our view
Firstly, criticism is ill conceived.  Equitable Life were greedy, making promises to “cut out the middle man Henry” and people encouraged to go direct.  Equitable Life then made promises that it couldn’t afford to keep.

Whilst we have sympathy will people that chose to not take advice and go to Equitable Life direct and are now in financial difficulty, this long standing case still highlights the benefit of taking advice.

We have a saying here “you can only con a greedy person”.  People who were greedy and thought they were getting a good deal without advice have of course now suffered.

From a compensation perspective, the government has stepped in to help.  Whilst laudable, to then criticise government departments for not tracing victims quickly, we feel is a little harsh.

Equitable Life directors got away with mis-managing a high consumer detriment risk firm, were paid well and did not suffer real consequences of their failure.

We believe the Retail Distribution Review RDR, where banks are now moving to no liability, non-advised selling is similar to the Equitable Life proposition and is a disaster waiting to happen.

Did you have an Equitable Life With Profits Policy?
Have you moved? Has a relative died that had such a scheme?

If so, get in touch with the compensation scheme or contact us and wewill point you in the rightdirection.