ENDOWMENT POLICIES

That this House notes that about 80,000 endowment policies are sold each year in the United Kingdom; acknowledges that there is a general recognition that while these policies provided a useful repayment vehicle for paying off mortgages when interest rates and stock market returns were much higher, this has not been the case for some time; and calls upon the financial services industry to undertake a fundamental re-assessment of the commission basis on which many of these products are sold in order to protect home owners who have depended on policy proceeds to redeem their mortgages.