It is our intention to campaign for consumers to get a better deal. We would like to work with the media to achieve this. We believe that in order to achieve this a number of key steps need to take place:

1: Consumers must be given better information. We would like to see all companies with any funds in with-profits produce a web based with-profits site which gives clear, concise and regularly updated information on their own with-profits funds.

2: We would like all companies to commit to keeping all plan holders informed about any guarantees that apply to plan holders' policies, so that they fully understand when and how they might use and maximise such guarantees.

3: We would like to see all companies clearly set out their charges on all their with-profits plans, including any hidden charges, particularly on old style conventional plans. We would like companies to reveal some form of cost analysis on the running of their with-profits plans and to make these transparent to consumers (not just to the FSA)

4: League tables need to be constructed to show the performance of the companies to alert investors to which companies are producing the goods and which companies are failing investors. We will attempt to create such league tables and to regularly update them. This survey has attached our first league tables.

Until this mess is sorted out individuals only really have one effective course of action and that is to get an individual, tailored review of their plan from an independent financial adviser who specialises in helping with-profit investors. It is essential this is undertaken by an adviser who understands the full issues relating to the market: we believe that not all advisers are fully apprised of these issues and this has been supported by industry surveys which have concluded that this anomaly exists.

We have a service which allows individuals to get such a tailored review and all our specialist advisers are ones who have demonstrated a full understanding of the market and related issues.