Following on from some of the things I've learned here, I've decided to sell my endowment policy rather than keep it when we move to Aus.

The best offer I have received would take 13 wks to complete, which will be after we arrive in Aus. I have another offer which would probably complete before, but is aprox £1000 less.

As I understand it, provided the deal completes before May 2007 (which it should do easily)the Aussie taxman won't be after a slice. Can anyone confirm this (otherwise I might be better off taking the lesser value but completing before we go!)

Any help appreciated!

Hi Guitarfish

We are in a similar position, and are looking to sell our endowment, would you be able to tell me who your best offer was from. As for the tax, I think that you will only get taxed on any growth in the endowment from when you emigrate to when it sells. As you presumably have a current valuation, and are going to sell at that, then I do not think you will get stung for tax in Aus. I may be wrong and if I am I'm sure someone here will put me right.

Good luck with the move.
Tracey & John

T&J

Thanks for the re-assurance, as I've already accepted the higher (but slower) offer.

All I did was to Google 'sell endowment' and keyed all the info from my 'surrender value' statement into the first 12 (ish) companies that came up. Took an hour or so to do.

Some companies said they couldn't beat the surrender value, some didn't bother to respond but I've had about 6 offers. Strangely, 4 of these (including highest)came from a company called Integrity, although I only went onto 1 website that was branded that way, and all 4 offers were different. If it helps you to know, surrender value was a bit under £12K and their best offer was £15.5K

I phoned the other bidders and asked if they wanted to raise their bids (they didn't!), but they did advise me to check the smallprint thoroughly, suggesting it might only be a provisional offer, dependent on Integrity finding a buyer. I've queried this with Integrity themselves, who tell me that if the policy matures between certain dates (mine did) then it's a firm offer, but average completion time is 13 weeks.

It all feels like a bit of a minefield, but I've accepted anyway cos I've got lots of other stuff to get on with at the moment (departue date 10th Sept!), so I guess I'll know if it was a good deciscion about end of Oct!

Good luck with yours. Maybe see you on the other side....

Chris