Equitable Life chief criticises Chadwick compensation figures

Equitable Life chief executive Chris Wiscarson has written to Treasury minister Mark Hoban to criticise the Chadwick Report, which has controversially proposed that policyholders should receive only a tenth of their losses.

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by Gavin Lumsden on Jul 26, 2010 at 11:11

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Equitable Life chief criticises Chadwick compensation figures

Equitable Life chief executive Chris Wiscarson has written to Treasury minister Mark Hoban to criticise the Chadwick Report, which has controversially proposed that policyholders should receive only a tenth of their losses.

Sir John Chadwick’s report suggested only between £400 million and £500 million should be paid in compensation to people who lost money from Equitable Life’s near collapse in 2000.

Wiscarson said £4.8 billion – the figure acknowledged in the report to be the total losses suffered by 1 million policyholders – should be the basis for compensation.

'We have never supported an approach which places store on the methodology used in calculating the lower ranges of numbers quoted by the minister,' he told the Sunday Telegraph.

The Chadwick report was commissioned by the previous Labour government, which did not accept all of the findings of an earlier report by the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham. She found the government guilty of 10 counts of maladministration, but it accepted only five findings of maladministration in full; it accepted four in part and rejected one. The Chadwick Report was commissioned on that basis.

'We cannot support the conclusions of a report which has objectives that appear to us quite different from what was anticipated by the Parliamentary Ombudsman,' he said.

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5 comments so far. Why not have your say?

ELAS policyholders are claiming £4billion to £4.8billion because that is what has been verified by the latest Chadwick report as the loss.

The reason they are claiming against the government is because several government agencies over a ten year period failed to tell policyholders of several major problems with the finances and strategy adopted by ELAS management.

The regulators were aware that a reassurance scheme used to fudge the financial health of the society was never valid (it was just a side letter with no legal basis) and they were therefore co-conspirators in deception (possibly fraud).

The regulators hoped that ELAS would trade its way out of trouble, but the lost GAR case and stock market crash exposed all the problems.

Professional advice would have been no use. IFAs never took any interest in ELAS because they couldn't sell the policies and if they had looked at the accounts they would have been misled because the accounts were "fixed". The regulators had a different set of accounts and were aware of problems.

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I have a suspicion the only group that can conclude this fiasco, will be the youngest policy holders when we meet our maker

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I agree the 'equitabledeath' policy

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Failed Banks Depositors Northern Rock, RBS, LLoyds TSB and Barinngs prerviously were SAVED with my money.

CAMERCLEGGCABLE - I WANT AND DEMAND MY COMPENSATION IN FULL now.

IF AUSTERIRY BRITAIN CANNOT AFFORD IT THEN IT CANNOT AFFORD UNFUNDED GOVERNMENT SECTOR PENSIONS AND THEY ARER ALL BANKRUPT AND MUST SUFFER MASSIVE CUTS IN THEIR PENSION NOW.

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Angela

Jul 30, 2010 at 12:02

Perhaps our new government will prove more honorable. The were elected as such. It would be easy to say that it had nowt to do with them .......... That would not be the honorable.

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