Eagle Star Endowment with Profit policy

To Mr Ivan Micallef, managing director, Eagle Star Malta:

This morning I called your office to inquire about the maturity value that I should expect from my Endowment with Profit policy when it matures on July 10..

To say that I was surprised would be an understatement. I was told that the additional terminal bonus payable on this policy that was started in 1978 amounts to just 18%, i.e. Lm820! A year ago you were quoting a terminal bonus of 44% and the previous year this was even more - 82%. What a huge disappointment!

I am not complaining about the fact that the annual declared bonus on the With-Profit Sum Assured and on the existing dwindled down to ludicrous percentages, as we all know what the global economic situation is at present. This is really beyond me.

I think it is grossly unfair and I must ask why do you reduce the terminal bonus payment on your schemes so drastically on the year they are due to mature? I don't imagine you, or your principals, can even begin to imagine the disappointment and frustration of your clients when, just a few weeks before their long-awaited encashment of their policy, they are told that the previous year's expectations of a terminal bonus have been reduced by a further 26%! Your clients deserve better than this shameful treatment!

All this goes to prove that all the glowing statements you sent year after year filling your clients with false hopes about a decent maturity value were, in my opinion, an exercise in deceit.

The same applies to all the false expectations given originally by your sales persons 25 years ago. No wonder a great number of your local clients some time ago expressed their ire and disappointment in the Customer Service Column of The Sunday Times against your company's shabby treatment of its clients!

On a final note, although I don't blame them for trying, I was not at all impressed or convinced by your company's representatives trying feebly to justify your parent company's shameless policy to treat its clients in this way. (Louis R. Schembri)

This is our biggest, most drawn out and unresolved issue in which we had the highest number of complainants. It is the issue on which we featured most letters and articles to no avail.

Indeed an action group was set up with over 300 members. A core group is working on the issue and, to safeguard the interests of the hundreds of misled Eagle Star policyholders, I will not divulge details of the work involved.

Regarding this letter, sent to Mr Micallef on April 24, on May 5, I asked him for his comments, to no avail. In such situations my policy is to give suppliers more than a fair opportunity to give us their side of the case prior to publication. However in this case I know I would be wasting my time.

As regular readers may remember, we have a track record regarding hundreds of Eagle Star cases featured in this column. Despite numerous requests Mr Micallef never bothered to send us his comments. At this point I only asked him once. If he does send us his comments I would be pleasantly surprised, so, just in case he has changed his policy, I ask him to send us his comments.