Equitable Life Payment Scheme

Thursday 5th September 2013 Written Statements

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

As of 31 August 2013 the scheme has made payments totalling £734 million. The scheme has also published a further progress report, which can be found at:

http://equitablelifepaymentscheme.independent.gov.uk/.

The scheme has now contacted all the eligible individual policyholders it can trace. Any holders of an individual non with-profits annuity or with-profits annuity who have not been contacted by the scheme should call the scheme on 0300 0200 150 to confirm the eligibility of their policy and be advised of the next steps they should take.

The scheme has also started making payments to those who bought their Equitable Life policy through a company pension scheme, with circa 148,000 payments already made to this group. All the traced company pension schemes have been written to by the payment scheme to begin the process of data exchange. As a result of this, agreements have been completed that cover circa 95% of policyholders, with data covering 65% sent to the scheme. Trustees who have not yet provided data have been asked to do so as soon as possible. On receipt of data from company pension scheme trustees, payments are being issued by the scheme.

The process of identifying, tracing and contacting the estates of deceased policyholders has been completed. Payments to all those estates that have responded to the scheme will continue over the coming months.