Yes, that's correct, endowment providers were writing to people from about 2002 onwards about potential endowment shortfalls and encouraging them to take steps to address it. Some did, some didn't.hucknallred wrote:
I speak from experience here too. If these people have maintained the endowment premiums then the provider will have been writing to them for the last 10 years with updates on the performance of the policy & advising them to sort out a means of repaying the capital if there is a high risk of a shortfall. My £23k policy was taken out in 1988 & ended up about £5k short at maturity.
If, like the Crawfords someone decided to just not pay the premium, does the provider let the mortgage provider know? They are 2 completely different products after all. I still have my endowment policy paperwork & there is no mention of the building society that provided the mortgage.
There's also a huge swathe of people who took out mortgages from 2005 that were interest-only without any repayment method. Lending standards were very different then and it's fair to say that most of those customers wouldn't qualify for an interest-only mortgage now. But the lenders are aware that they'll need to do something to help these customers - where they can, and where the customers are willing to engage in finding a solution.
If an endowment policy was assigned to the lender, then the lender would've been told if it was about to lapse. But from the late 80s onwards lenders stopped asking for policies to be assigned as it was just an extra faff of paperwork. Instead they just warned the customers that it was their responsibility to ensure there was a repayment vehicle in place.
The Crawfords' policy was assigned to B&B, because when the policy finally lapsed the £170-odd was paid into the mortgage account. If it hadn't been assigned, the cheque would've been sent to Tom and Sue. B&B also then offered to transfer the mortgage onto a repayment basis, which, as we know, Tom refused to do.