Tanya claimed a delay in receiving her endowment policy proceeds prevented her from reinvesting the funds as planned.
What happened
In early November, Tanya’s ten-year endowment policy was due to mature, so she’d receive a lump-sum payout. A couple of days before the payout was due, she wrote to the business to say she’d moved to Saudi Arabia.
Tanya thought that the business would pay the profits of her policy straight into her UK bank account. Just after the policy's maturity date, she contacted her bank and found that the money hadn’t been paid in. She wrote to the business to ask what had happened.
The business said it hadn’t yet sent the money. It was waiting for Tanya to sign and return the documents it had sent her some weeks earlier, which she’d said she’d never received. To speed things up, the business said it would send her a declaration form to sign instead. It told her it would pay the money into her account as soon as it received the signed copy.
The business faxed the declaration form to Tanya in Saudi Arabia on 7 December. Tanya signed and posted it back, but it didn’t arrive until 23 December. The funds were then paid into Tanya’s account on 3 January.
Tanya was upset that she couldn’t access her money because of the month-long delay. She complained that the firm had stopped her from reinvesting the funds at the end of November, as she’d planned.
The firm responded to Tanya’s complaint, but still unsatisfied, she brought her complaint to us.
What we said
We looked at all the facts. We didn’t think the firm was responsible for the delay. It had sent Tanya the necessary documents six weeks before the policy matured, in line with normal practice. At the time, it wasn’t aware that Tanya had moved overseas and sent the letter to her UK address.
Tanya had asked her son, who was still living at her UK address, not to forward any mail to her, due to recent anthrax scares (a serious but rare infectious disease) with the Middle East postal service.
When the business became aware that Tanya hadn’t seen the letter and the documents, it faxed her a declaration form. It agreed to send the money as soon as she signed and returned the form. Since the business didn’t receive the form until 23 December, some delay was expected because of closures over Christmas. We thought that the firm had processed the release of the money as quickly as it could and didn’t uphold Tanya’s complaint.