25-year returns from with-profits to keep on falling

The returns from 25-year with-profits endowment policies are expected to continue falling unless the stock market can recover strongly in the coming years. As each year passes, another year's exposure to the strong growth run of the late 1970s-1980s is lost as it slips out of the 25-year timeframe. For example, policies maturing at the end of 2002 missed out on the FTSE AllShare's 43.6% growth in 1977 and gained exposure to the 22.4% loss in 2002. Between 1979 and 1986, the FTSE All-Share delivered average annualised growth of 24.32%, far above the single-digit returns many investors ...