What would home insurance be in London?

Took an insurance policy with the United Friendly Insurance Company Limited in 1981.?

• A Gentleman came to my London home every Monday to collect payment. Around 1985 i told him i can no longer continue with this insurance as I was moving out of the area. Unfortunately i seemed to have misplace my policy. He told me that when i found my policy number i should send it to the office in order to get my money back. Today i have found my policy rang the Royal London who have now taken over the Company gave them my policy number but to my great surprise i was told that there was no records of my policy Number neither my details on file. This sounds very unhealthy. HELP! where can i seek advise and what are my chances of getting my money back.

• Answer:

  Have I misunderstood? You took out a policy in 1981 and paid premiums for 4 years until 1985? The you were told to contact the head office to get your money back? For some reason you waited 26 years before doing this, and you are wondering why the company that bought out your insurer does not have any records? I'm not even sure that you would be entitled to any money back anyway. If you were paying for insurance against possible risks, you can never get you money back if the risk never happens (in the same way that you don't get your premium back if you don't crash your car). Or were you paying for an assurance policy that would pay out if a definite event (eg a death) happens within a particular timescale? Sometimes this kind of policy is also an investment scheme, so if the event does not occur (eg you don't die) you will get a payout. Even if it was this kind of policy, you don't get your money back if you cancel early - you get whatever is in the investment pot. Except that this kind of policy is usually paid "with profits" which means that it is generally worth very little if cancelled early. In any case, when a debt is more than 6 years old it is unenforceable in a court. Which means you have no way of forcing the insurer to pay up, even if you have all the evidence of exactly what was owed. In practice I'm sure it would not come to this, but you really cannot expect any insurer to have records of accounts that were closed 26 years ago.