Making Your Choice

Policyholder Update 17 September 2009

Dear Policyholder,

We would like to bring you up to date on the High Court hearings into the Aviva fund transfer and reattribution, which began on Monday 14 September.

The hearing took place in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice before Mr Justice Norris. Over the three days the Judge heard submissions from counsel for Aviva, the policyholder advocate and the Financial Services Authority. These dealt with the outlines of the proposals, the work of the policyholder advocate, including some of her reservations (which you can also see in her witness statement on this site), and the Financial Services Authority's fairness appraisal. The FSA said that the application from Aviva was not one to which it would object.

The court also heard from objectors to the proposals. One was heard on Monday in respect of mortgage endowment shortfalls. On Tuesday and Wednesday two members of the Norwich Union Policyholder Action Group gave a lengthy submission dealing with, among other things, a call for the estate to be distributed 90:10 to policyholders and shareholders, questioning the voting period, the size of the estate, and whether policyholders had contributed to the estate. Two other policyholders also spoke on Wednesday. One examined various Articles of Association, among other things, in a claim that policyholders should receive a distribution. The last objector was also a shareholder and was concerned to ensure that the funds would be secure after the reattribution.

Answers to these questions may be found in Chapter 8 of the policyholder advocate's supplementary report http://www.policyholderadvocate.org/supplementary-report and in the Independent Expert's supplementary report (Section 11 'Correspondence with policyholders'). The Independent expert's report may be found by following this link to the Aviva fund transfer website - https://www.lifeft.qs.aviva.co.uk/fundtransfer/announce/reattribution-doc-library.do Counsel for Aviva also responded to some of the main points of objection in a closing submission to the court. The final action was a point of procedure in relation to policyholders resident in Portugal, which Aviva asked the judge to consider. It involves the Financial Services Authority but is not a matter for the policyholder advocate.

Mr Justice Norris informed the court that he would consider his decision and give it on Friday 18 September at 2.00pm. He anticipated that his written judgement would take some time to produce.

The Office of the Policyholder Advocate will provide a much more detailed account of the court proceedings in due course.

We will tell you what the judge has to say tomorrow.

Yours faithfully

Jonathan Haslam

director of communications