Equitable Life: compensation scheme

The Coalition Government of 2010 accepted the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s recommendations to pay compensation to Equitable Life policyholders who had been affected by the company’s financial problems going back 25 years and the failure of government bodies to prevent such problems.

After consultation a Compensation Scheme was established. It was an enormous administrative task attempted in a short time span.  The Scheme was criticised as not being nearly generous enough by Equitable Life policyholders and by the National audit Office for operational problems.

Nevertheless the Scheme managed to pay nearly £1.08 billion to 915,453 policyholders by September 2015 which was about 88% of eligible policyholders, and 92.9% of the money due.

The Scheme is due to close in December 2015.