Patrick O’Farrell says he has lost around 60,000 in income because two Equitable Life pension funds that should have been paying out 12,500 a year were now only worth 6,830 a year, The Telegraph reports.
It’s a fall of nearly 50% and means he has still to pay off his mortgage and, at 70, cannot even think about retiring yet. “It’s very painful,” he says. “And one of the consequences of getting older is that it becomes harder to work, but there is nothing I can do about it. I’m extremely angry and what really disturbs me is that Gordon Brown will no doubt try every delaying tactic he can to put off paying people compensation. More and more of us are dying and, by the time he finds he has to pay out, a lot of the people who are owed will be dead, so the Government’s bill will be far less. Brown must not be let off the hook for this.
“It is of no use for Gordon Brown to say that Equitable Life has ‘culpability’ in its own demise when it was the Government’s duty to ascertain this and act accordingly to correct the situation. What use are government-appointed ombudsmen if their considered judgments are totally ignored?”
O’Farrell, an accountant (pictured), and his wife Gillian, 65, who live in Cambridge, switched to Equitable Life in 1996. He says he “could not even think” about giving up work. “My mortgage hasn’t been paid off yet, although it would have been had I not lost all that money. I thought I was doing the wise thing by saving for retirement with such a reputable company yet I, like thousands of others, have been caught short. And with all the financial problems the Government has got it seems they will have every excuse not to offer compensation.”
Reports by Nick Britten John Stamier did not plan to still be working when he was 75, but such is the situation he finds himself in following the near-collapse of Equitable Life that he has no alternative. When he and his wife, Hazel, also 75, transferred their pension to an Equitable Life with-profits fund in 1995, they expected the annuities to help see them through their retirement.
But they have watched as the monthly payments have got less and less, so forcing Stamier to postpone plans to give up work. The couple are now receiving only 200 a month from the Equitable Life pension, far less than they had anticipated. Stamier, from Upton Bishop, Herefordshire, has shelved plans to give up work at the family fabric-importing business, which his son now runs.
And he called on the Government to offer compensation to the victims of the mutual’s collapse. He says he knows victims who have been forced to sell their homes but he and his wife were determined to remain in the house in which they have lived since 1955.
“We have got to be very careful of what we spend. Fortunately, unlike some others, we are not on the breadline, but if I wasn’t working it would be very difficult,” he says.