7: A majority of companies offering with-profits employ staff who are customer facing (normally on the telephone) who don’t know anything about with-profits, how it works and are therefore often incapable of helping their customers.

8: Companies offering with-profits now generally offer PPFMs (Principles and Practices of Financial Management) which are required by the regulator (the FSA). These are commonly used and heralded by the companies as a sign of great transparency. In our view they may make the position more transparent for the FSA (which helps) and to a certain extent to professional advisers (which also helps) but they don’t help consumers.

9: Performance in the market has been very mixed: which makes generalised statements about with-profits performance very hard. Some with-profits have been good, some average and some poor. However it is very difficult for consumers to differentiate between the different categories.

10: Companies often have different with-profits funds under their own banner, which sometimes vary considerably in performance, making the position even more difficult. A company (e.g. AEGON Scottish Equitable) can have good with-profits funds and bad with-profits funds under the one umbrella.

11: Companies (e.g. Reliance Mutual) don’t supply easy to understand information, either because they don’t have it or they don’t want to reveal it, even to industry specialists.