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Nine out of ten Equitable Life victims yet to get compensation
by Alex Steger on Feb 06, 2012 at 08:18
Nine out of ten victims the Equitable Life scandal, who are owned compensation are yet to be paid a penny, according to The Mail on Sunday.
The Mail, reported that official figures showed £70 million has been paid to 96,000 policy holders who lost money after Equitable Life nearly collapsed in 2000, but this meant 90% of the 982,000 victims had yet to be compensated since the payments started in June 2011.
Under a deal agreed by the Coalition, the government promised to pay £1.5 billion to Equitable Life victims.
Treasury figures quoted by The Mail showed that 11,000 of the 37,000 with profits annuitants, or 30%, have received a total of £9.3 million, but only 85,000 of the remaining 945,000 policy holders, or 9%, had received payment.
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5 comments so far. Why not have your say?
Julian Stevens
Feb 06, 2012 at 09:31
One of the first of the great regulatory failures, I believe, and they don't seem to have stopped since. It's a rather sorry indictment of a regulatory monster that's just announced its 2012 budget to be £580m (not to mention the FSCS and the MAS), with the costs of mopping up most of the motorway pile-ups that the FSA could and should have headed off somehow or other dumped on the IFA sector.
report thisCirrusPilot
Feb 06, 2012 at 10:01
Looks as though they are justing waiting for all the claimants to die off.
Why has this situation been permitted to continue ?
report thisA Childs View
Feb 06, 2012 at 11:29
For a pittance of what the Govt has spent propping up the banking system the entire Equitable debacle could have been avoided. Some relatively short term solvency latitude would have kept the lawyers at bay and resulted in far better outcomes for Equitable's clients and the industry. Indeed, the level of the Govt compensation package for mis-regulation would have been enough! A complete shambles of astronomic proportion.
report thisMan in Black
Feb 06, 2012 at 15:56
Not convinced the claimant pool is actually this large, but clearly the bulk are still out of pocket.
Afraid its only right that if the Government lures people into a false sense of security by setting up these regulatory bodies (and OK, I know this was a joint DTI/FSA one), the tax payer picks up the tab when the Regulation fails.
And as with Equitable, Ditto Arch Cru. The Government either needs to beat Crapita into paying this one - perhaps out of all those lucrative outsourcing contracts it has - or it needs to pay it from the General Taxpayer. It certainly needs to stop the FSA covering its tracks and pushing this onto IFAs and (inevitably) the FSCS levies of those of us who didn't use these funds!!
report thisJulian Stevens
Feb 06, 2012 at 16:33
Talking of regulatory failures, has anyone seen this http://www.wecando.co.uk/intro/pension-backed-loans/?
Our network's verdict is that it looks decidedly TGTBT.
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