Equitable Life victims still waiting for payments

Business Correspondent/Personal Finance Editor

Saturday 7 July 2012

One-third of the most deserving and elderly Equitable Life victims has yet to receive any compensation 12 months after the pay-out scheme was launched.

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SIMON BAIN

Of the 37,000 ageing pensioners who hold with-profits annuities, 12,000 have yet to receive even a first payment, despite the Treasury promising to achieve that within a year, campaigners said this week.

The 40,000-member Equitable Members Action Group (EMAG) responded angrily to a statement from Financial Secretary Mark Hoban, claiming that two-thirds of victims had been paid out, saying the boasts masked a "shambolic failure to deliver the compensation promised".

Paul Braithwaite, EMAG secretary, said: "It is a disgraceful concealment that fully 12,000 of the 37,000 with profits annuitant (WPAs) correctly expecting their first cheque "by June", many having been meeting the postman every day, have yet to receive one penny of their 100% compensation. "The fact is only £29 million of the £72m set aside for WPAs in year one has been paid."Mr Hoban said the scheme had written to around 90% of all eligible individual policyholders to inform them of their status, and that £278m had been paid out to over 288,000 policyholders.But EMAG said that including members of group schemes only 25% had received any payments, while of the 494,000 letters said to have been sent, most had only just been despatched and the majority contained "a vague promise with a new date of April next year".Of those who had heard from the scheme, thousands were still being asked to verify their identity – even people who had not moved home in decades."We are not aware of a single person receiving a payment after confirming their address months ago," the group said. Over 200,000 policyholders were yet to be notified of what they would receive, despite the promise to do so by last month.EMAG spokesman Paul Weir said: "EMAG is receiving hundreds of phone calls and e-mails from distressed pensioners who want to know why they are still waiting for payment, or who believe they have been forgotten. "We predicted this failure months ago, when we saw that valuable months had been squandered doing nothing after the scheme was first announced."The group is calling on the Treasury to send a payment to the remaining 11,000 WPAs without further delay and to meet its promise to inform other policyholders of their entitlement. It also endorses MPs' calls for the scheme to provide worked examples of how payments are calculated, which can be easily understood, and to make the more complex comparator data available for scrutiny by independent actuaries.

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Equitable Life victims still waiting for payments

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