Prudential

What Prudential is doing

Prudential is in the process of looking at its £8.6 billion inherited estate , but a decision on whether to proceed with the re-attribution process has been delayed until later in 2008.

Prudential has nominated Peter Bloxham to be a policyholder advocate. If the company goes ahead with the distribution, he will determine with the company the size of the estate and then look to agree how much will be available for each class of policyholder.

Once negotiations are complete the company and the policyholder advocate will write to eligible policyholders explaining the result. Policyholders will be offered a payment for their right to share in the inherited estate and asked whether they want to accept it, and the High Court will be asked whether to approve the deal.

Are you eligible?

Not all Prudential policyholders will qualify for the reattribution. However as Prudential have yet to confirm that they are going ahead with their reattribution, policyholders will not have received information on their eligibility yet.

The company has confirmed that to be eligible, people will need to have had a with-profits policy in the With-Profits Sub-Fund of Prudential’s Long Term Fund on 14 March 2007, and still hold the policy at the effective date of the proposed reattribution.

Policyholders with non-profit products and general insurance products, and those whose policies were originally with Equitable Life and Scottish Amicable policyholders, will not qualify.

The next steps

Prudential first announced that it was considering a reattribution of its inherited estate in March 2007. A formal decision on whether to proceed is due to be made in the first half of 2008.

Which? believes that there is no justification for further delaying this process.

We think the company should return as much money as is feasible to policyholders at the earliest possible opportunity and we'll carry on working to this effect.