Provident Mutual endowment policies were sold as investment vehicles for paying off endowment based mortgages. However, uk home owner mortgages that were endowment based are increasingly being changed to repayment mortgages, and the policy holders are either keeping the Provident Mutual endowment policies as personal savings plans or are surrendering the policies back to the life offices

However, surrendering your endowment policies should be viewed as a last resort, as they are meant to be long term investment products which have valuable life cover attached to them. Although alternative life insurance cover can be easily found, simply surrendering the endowment policies back to the issuing life office might be regretted if later on the policy holder realises the extra cash they could have got by selling the policies instead to second hand endowment policy traders.

Provident Mutual with profits endowment policies, if old enough, have been bought by the policy traders and many policy holders have enjoyed better returns than simply surrendering the endowment policies for the surrender value offered by the life company

"Selling endowment policies is no more complicated than surrendering endowment policies"