Norwich Union

Norwich Union is facing a bill to policyholders of at least £6m after a review of its charges and total expense ratios revealed some unit-linked policyholders have been paying more than the charges disclosed.

NORWICH UNION is the latest company to "ditch" the pensions sector for more profitable business, reports this morning's Scotsman, after yesterday calling for large-scale deregulation of the pensions market.

Norwich Union (NU) Healthcare has today launched a new private medical insurance (PMI) product for the individual market.

Norwich Union is offering investors in the Provident Mutual with-profits fund the chance to elect to invest in the CGNU product which has a higher equity ratio, as the company has plans to reduce its shares and property holding from 24% to 10%.

Barclays Bank has signed a multi-tie agreement with six of the UK's big brand life insurers, ahead of depolarisation.

Norwich Union is launching a new with-profits guarantee fund which promises to repay all of the policyholder's original capital if they withdraw their funds on the fifth anniversary, regardless of how investments has performed.

Poor handling of endowment mis-selling complaints by financial services firms will increase the number of such cases passing through the Financial Ombudsman Service to around 70,000 cases a year until 2007, alleges the service.

Three million with-profits policyholders with Norwich Union have today found out they will split £1bn in annual bonuses between them as the main CGNU fund made an investment return of 11.5% through last year.

Announcing its with-profits regular bonus rates and payout values for existing policyholders will be published on 18 January 2005, Norwich Union says bonus rates on unitised policies will remain unchanged.

The financial services industry has won a short-term reprieve against the implementation of a tax on with-profits assets.