SIMON BAIN
Pensioners who lost money with Equitable Life are being urged to ensure they are claiming pension credit in order to maximize their compensation.
Equitable Life Members Action Group, the 15-year-old campaign group with 20,000 members, has issued a reminder that the July budget introduced a top-up for some victims from the Treasury’s Equitable Life Payment Scheme.
The chancellor said the scheme created in 2012 would close at the end of this year, and some £45million of leftover cash would be shared among anyone claiming pension credit who took out a conventional with-profits policy with the insurer between 1 September 1992 and 31 December 2000. Also qualifying are those with an accumulating with-profits policy which started between the same dates or had at least one premium paid into it between 1993 and 2000. The average pay-out from the scheme on such policies was £800, which will now be doubled.
Paul Weir, spokesman for EMAG, said: “This is means testing and will not benefit many of the victims. However for those who may be eligible for pension credit, they would have to be mad not to try to get the benefit as it could help them get more of their own money back from the government.”
Most of the 945,000 policyholders are being paid only 22.4 per cent of their losses under the scheme, though in December 2013 the government under campaign pressure agreed a £5000 payment to 9,000 pre-September 1992 policyholders, all over 80, who had been excluded from the scheme.
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