Countrywide Assured quits endowment mortgages

Financial services and estate agent group Countrywide Assured marked its interim results with news that it is to stop selling endowment mortgages, after its profits fell by more than a quarter. Countrywide's managing director Harry Hill said its reason for quitting endowments was twofold - a lack of demand from homebuyers following the product's adverse publicity in recent years, and because the expense of training staff to comply with regulatory details for the shrinking interest in the product was deemed to be a waste of company resources. Hill said there is no plan to replace the endowme...