Endowment frequently asked questions

We’ll pay the money to you unless:

• the policy is assigned to another person or company, in which case we’ll pay the money to them
• the policy is held under trust, in which case we’ll pay the trustees
• you have asked us to pay the money to a solicitor 
• if it's a joint policy and you’ve separated, in which case we’ll pay a percentage to each of you

We’ll pay out the money when your policy matures, as long as we’ve got all the documents and proof of identity we’ve asked for.  In some instances, it may take three to five working days for a direct credit payment to your bank account to clear.

If your policy is held under trust, we need all the trustees to sign the endowment maturity and payment release forms. We might also need further identification, which may include a High-risk Identification Form or identity verification certificate. Also as we believe that the Trust should have been registered with HMRC using their Trust Registration Service we will need to see the Registration Certificate. If this is the case, we'll contact you. We will then pay one or more of the trustees or a solicitor acting on behalf of the trustees. The trustees or the solicitor will distribute the money as set out by the trust.

Yes, you can. This is the standard way we'll pay you.

We may need to see proof of account ownership for the account we’re paying the money to. So we may need to see either a bank statement (original or certified) dated within the last three months, a paying in slip or a cancelled cheque.

Please contact us if you need to arrange an alternative payment method.

We'll ask you to prove your identity by sending us one of the following:

• passport
• driving licence 
• a current national ID card
• a current benefit book
• an HMRC Notice of Coding or any other HMRC correspondence from the last 12 months which shows your name, address and National Insurance number

If you can’t provide the above, please contact us.

We may also ask you to fill in a High-risk Identification Form or get an identity verification certificate from your solicitor.

We'll also ask you to provide proof of address through a recent bank statement, utility bill or tax bill.

On some policies, we won’t know the final maturity value until the day it matures. This means we'll calculate the value of your policy on that day. Until then, we can only give you an estimated maturity value.

Yes, we'll give you details in the settlement letter we send you. We can't give you a full breakdown of the final figures until your policy matures.

The Mortgage Endowment Promise is an assurance given in 2000, to customers with eligible mortgage endowment policies, that an additional amount may be payable at maturity if certain policy conditions are met. It won’t apply if your policy was originally with Friends Life, and will only apply to you if you're a mortgage endowment policyholder invested in the With-Profit Fund and had a shortfall projected in December 1999 when we calculated the maximum amount that might be payable under our promise.

In 2000, we provided illustrations for all With-Profits mortgage endowment policyholders, showing what they might get back at the end of the policy term.

These illustrations used actual investment returns to 31 December 1999 and assumed returns from then on of 4%, 6% and 8%.

If the projected payment from your policy at the 6% assumed rate was below the target amount to repay the mortgage, your policy may benefit from our promise.

Our promise was to cover any actual shortfall at the maturity of these policies up to a maximum of the 31 December 1999 projected shortfall at the 6% assumed return. Even with this payment, you may still have a shortfall at the end of the policy term.

If your policy qualifies for a promise payment, your maturity letter will show the maximum amount we will add to your policy.

Our promise was subject to certain conditions, including:

• You have paid all the premiums on your policy at the time of maturity
• You haven't materially changed your policy since we announced the promise (examples of a material change are decreasing your premium and cashing in bonuses in full or part)
• Your policy has not been sold through the second hand endowment market
• Your policy has been continually invested 100% in the With-Profit Fund since we announced our promise

Here are 2 examples of how the promise might apply at the maturity of your policy:

Example 1: Your maturity value is lower than projected in December 1999 – we'll pay the maximum amount under the promise, which will reduce the shortfall from the target figure.

Example 2: Your maturity value is higher than projected in December 1999 – we'll still make a payment under the promise to increase your maturity payment up to the target amount, but this is lower than the maximum promise amount.

* The maximum promise payment applicable to your policy will be shown in your maturity letter

You can cash in your policies whenever you want to. However, if you cash them in early, you may lose out on any final bonus or mortgage endowment promise that may be added. Also, there may be charges for cashing in your policies early.

We recommend that you talk to a financial adviser before you make your final decision about cashing in your policies.

We won’t be able to pay out your money until we receive all of the information we've asked for.

We'll tell you what information we need, this may include:

Your original policy document

We may ask you for the policy document as it helps us verify your claim to the money from the policy. If you’ve lost the policy document, please contact us.

Proof of your bank account

We may use information from third party verification service providers to check that the bank account details we hold belong to you. If we can’t complete these checks, we may ask you for evidence even if we’ve been taking premiums from this account. 

We'll accept:

• A recent bank or building society statement
• A blank cancelled cheque, (blank cheque with the word void written across it and a line diagonally across the width of the cheque)
• A paying-in slip
• A certificate of verification of identity from your financial adviser

Proof of your identity

If you live outside the UK, we'll ask you to prove your identity by sending us one of the following:

• Your passport
• Your driving licence
• A current national ID card
• A current benefit book
• An HMRC Notice of Coding or any other HMRC correspondence from the last 12 months which shows your name, address and National Insurance number

If you can’t provide the above, please contact us.

We may also ask you to fill in a High-risk Identification Form.

We'll also ask you to provide proof of address through a recent bank statement, utility bill or tax bill.

Under current legislation, we must verify your identity before we pay out any money. This helps to protect against fraud and also makes sure that we only pay the person who is entitled to the money.

If you have a financial adviser, they can provide you with a certificate to say that they have checked your identity as required under the UK anti-money laundering regulations. If you send us this certificate, you won't have to provide further proof of your identity to us.

We have to be sure that we pay the money to the right person. To do this, and to protect against fraud, we may check the bank identity even if we're paying the money into an account from which we've collected premiums. This is because it's possible the account doesn't belong to the person who is entitled to the money from the policy.

We also need to check that your personal identity and your bank identity match. We do this by matching the addresses.

We can accept internet bank statements but we may ask for them to be stamped by a member of staff at the bank or building society who issued the statement. We'll also need the bank employee's name, staff number, telephone number and job title. An internet statement is much easier to forge than a statement on letter-headed paper, so we need to be sure that it's genuine.

A certified copy is a copy (often a photocopy) of a legal or other type of document which has been certified by an appropriate individual or institution. Certification of documents guards against the risk that fake documentation is used. By certifying a document, that individual is confirming that it is a true, complete and up-to-date copy of the original at a given date.

If you live in the UK we won’t need a certified copy of your documents but you should send us a legible copy.  If you live outside the UK, we may need certified copies so please call us and we’ll explain what you need to do.

Those certifying should date and sign the copy, marking it with the text ‘I confirm that this is a true copy of the original document’ or 'original seen'. They should also provide their full name, professional position and contact details.

Photocopies of evidence provided must be certified or authenticated (and translated where applicable) by:

• A lawyer or attorney
• A person or institution who is authorised by a Financial Services firm within the EU or equivalent jurisdiction
• An officer of an embassy, consulate or high commission within the relevant jurisdiction. You can find contact details for these offices at www.gov.uk/world/embassies

You must complete and sign the forms for each separate policy because you must confirm payment details and the declaration for each one. However, if you have a number of policies maturing on or near the same date, you only need to provide evidence of your identity once. If the bank information is the same for each policy, you only need to supply evidence for your bank identity once too. If the bank information is different, you must supply evidence for each account.

If you have already supplied evidence of your personal and bank identity within the last three months, you don't have to send it again.

If a policy is in joint names, both policyholders must sign the payment release form.

If you want to claim all the money, you must provide us with evidence that you are now the sole owner of the policy. If you have a Deed of Assignment dated before the maturity date confirming that you are the sole policyholder, please send us the original document or a certified copy.

If there is no Deed of Assignment, we will treat the policy as still being jointly owned. This means we need signed confirmation from both of the policyholders agreeing how the payment should be made.

Unless we're dividing the money equally, we need to see one item from each of these lists for each policyholder in addition to the bank identification we ask for:

Proof of your identity

• Your passport
• Your driving licence
• A current national ID card
• A current benefit book
• An HMRC Notice of Coding or any other HMRC correspondence from the last 12 months which shows your name, address and National Insurance number

If you can’t provide one of the above documents, we’ll need two separate documents from the list below, at least one must be a government issued non-photo document.

Government issued non-photo document

• Valid, old style full driving licence (old style provisional licences are not acceptable)
• Evidence of entitlement to state benefit or state pension
• Evidence of local authority funded benefit
• Evidence of tax credit
• Evidence of educational or other grant

Other (not printed from the Internet)

• Current instrument of a court appointment (such as a grant of probate)
• Council Tax demand or statement for the current year
• Current bank statement dated within the last 6 months (credit card statements are not acceptable)
• Gas, electricity or water bill dated within the last 6 months
• Document from Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulated product provider dated in the last 12 months

Proof of your address

• A bank statement from the last three months (can be the same statement used for bank identification if it confirms your address)
• A utility bill dated within the last three months
• A council tax bill for the current year

The original policy document helps validate your claim to the money. If the policy is assigned to a bank or building society, they will normally keep the original policy document as part of their safeguards.

If you’ve lost the policy document, please contact us.

If the policy is held under trust, we need all the trustees to sign the endowment maturity and payment release forms. We might also need further identification, which may include a High-risk Identification Form. Also as we believe that the Trust should have been registered with HMRC using their Trust Registration Service we will need to see the Registration Certificate. If this is the case, we'll contact you. We will then pay one or more of the trustees or a solicitor acting on behalf of the trustees. The trustees or the solicitor will distribute the money as stipulated by the trust.

We’ll pay the money to the assignee. If your policy is no longer assigned, you need to let us know by sending us one of these items:

The Deed of Assignment, which must:

• Be reassigned to you
• Quote the policy number being reassigned
• Be dated
• Signed by an authorised company signatory and carry their company stamp
• Either an original or a certified copy

A Deed of Reassignment

• Depending on the value of your policy, we may need to see an original letter of no further interest from the company concerned with an inked signature. We can't accept copies or faxes of the letter

If our records show that your policy is assigned to your bank or building society, we must assume that the money belongs to them. We can't pay you until we have confirmation from them that they are no longer entitled to the money from the policy. You'll need to ask for a letter of no further interest because the Data Protection Act prevents banks and building societies disclosing any information about you directly to us.

A letter of no further interest must:

• Be on company-headed paper
• Include the policy number and the policyholder's name
• Clearly state that the company no longer has any interest in the policy
• Signed and dated by an authorised signatory of that company
• An original document

If this is the case, the lender normally contacts us before the policy matures. We will then send any correspondence directly to them. We'll also send a copy to you as the policyholder, or to the lender if the policy is assigned to one. If you receive the original documentation rather than a copy, you should liaise with the lender and pass the correspondence to them. You won't need to sign any of the forms if the lender is claiming the policy proceeds.

The lender will complete all forms and return them directly to us, along with an original deed of assignment.

We’ll deduct the outstanding amount (which may include interest) from the final settlement before paying out the money. Your maturity pack will provide the maturity value along with deductions for any outstanding loans or unpaid premium arrangements.

We can pay the money from the policy to a Trustee in Bankruptcy. However, before we do this, we would need to see the original or certified copy of the Bankruptcy Order (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) and the original Deed of Appointment of Trustee. If you have been declared bankrupt in Scotland, we’ll need to see the original Award of Sequestration and the document that shows who has been elected or appointed as the permanent trustee (original or certified copies).

When we’re happy that the bankruptcy trustee has a valid claim on the policy, we’ll accept that trustee's signature on any discharge/payment release forms. If you jointly owned the policy with another person before your bankruptcy, that person must also sign our forms with the trustee.