'Wrong’ advice gives ‘Equitable Life’ a run for its millions |
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Published
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Thu, 24 Mar 2005 01:00
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Equitable Life could be heading for big trouble following the verdict of the financial investigator, Mr. Walter Merricks, who has ruled in favour of Ms E, an Equitable Life personal pension policy holder.
Ms E had filed a complaint against Equitable for misguiding her and not informing her that there were possibilities that the company could lose the case over guarantees of valuable minimum income given to customers in court. On account of this, Ms E had to suffer huge financial losses when Equitable actually lost the court case.
| Equitable has been directed by Mr. Merricks’ to reimburse Ms E’s loss, which could run into millions, through payments into her pension fund. With this ruling to apply to another 1,500 policyholders, Equitable Life is surely standing on troubled waters.
Ms E will now be compensated adequately for not receiving the correct advice by Equitable salesmen or for receiving advice that "did not meet the standards" of Ms E, as Mr. Merricks put it. Mr. Merricks explained that Ms E could have secured herself by taking out a policy with another company, if Equitable had given her the right information in the beginning.
It was also specified that the compensation provided had to be sufficient to place Ms E in her erstwhile financial condition before investing with Equitable Life, thought the exact amount is not yet known.
However, policyholders were not seeing partying despite their legal win, in view of the ombudsman previous decision of notwithstanding last year’s complaints and investigations in the Penrose report. Policyholders were quite disappointed and felt cheated as the government had continued to ignore calls from the complainants, saying that the ombudsman was there to entertain all calls and complaints.
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