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From the BBC
Savers await Equitable decision
The Equitable crisis hit more than a million policy holders
Savers who lost money in the Equitable Life assurance company could be offered compensation by the government in an announcement due later.
The long-awaited Treasury statement is expected to be made on Thursday.
Last July the Parliamentary Ombudsman called for compensation for more than a million policyholders in the society.
Ann Abraham said maladministration was partly to blame for savings, mainly private pensions, being slashed after the society's near-collapse in 2000.
"This has to be welcome news for the society and its members," said an Equitable Life spokesman.
But Paul Braithwaite, of the Equitable Members Action Group (EMAG), doubted "full compensation", which he put at about £4.5bn, would be offered to Equitable policyholders.
"If true, this is an about-turn by the government," he added.
"The government has spent years delaying and denying and we have learned not to trust them," he said.
Tribunal
The Daily Telegraph claimed the Treasury would announce the establishment of an independent tribunal to decide exactly who should be compensated, and by how much.
The Equitable Life affair is a saga of maladministration that ran throughout the 1990s 
Simon Morris, Cameron McKenna
Until now, the government has argued that the failure of the Equitable, one of the the UK's biggest pension companies, was the fault of its own management.
The government's arguments relied heavily on the findings of an official report by Lord Penrose in 1994.
He decided that although regulation of the Equitable had failed, "principally, the society was the author of its own misfortunes".
It had, he found, declared its investment policies to be worth far more than was really the case, and had made promises to some savers - those with guaranteed annuity rates (GAR) - that could not be fulfilled.
That position was crystallised in 2000 when the courts told the Equitable it would have to put aside £1.5bn - money it did not have - to make good its promises to those GAR holders.
In the wake of that decision, the society's executives decided in December that year to close it to new business and put it up for sale.
Maladministration
Arguments about who was to blame have continued since then.
Last year, an inquiry by the Ombudsman - her second into the matter - pointed to numerous official failings over the space of a decade, which had allowed the society to exaggerate its financial health for many years.
Ann Abraham said the government should pay compensation
Ms Abraham concluded that some regulators and government departments, including the Department of Trade and Industry, the Government Actuary's Department, and the Financial Services Authority, had failed to do their jobs properly and oversee the Equitable adequately.
She said the Equitable had been in a "dire" financial position since 1990 and had been allowed to continue trading, and selling policies to new savers, long past the point when it should have been closed.
"The Equitable Life affair is a saga of maladministration that ran throughout the 1990s," said Simon Morris, of law firm Cameron McKenna.
"The regulators ignored warnings that Equitable Life wasn't being properly run, didn't carefully study the information that Equitable Life provided and didn't properly exercise their powers to protect policyholders," he added.
Fine judgement
Even if there is a change of heart by the government, which has so far argued that taxpayers cannot be expected to provide compensation for commercial losses, it does not mean that surviving Equitable policyholders can expect money soon.
"The establishment of a tribunal to calculate compensation will just be the first step in what could prove to a complicated and lengthy process, involving hundreds of thousands of members, each with their own individual policy details," warned Tom McPhail, head of pensions research at independent financial advisor Hargreaves Lansdown.
"Disentangling regulatory failure from management incompetence will be a matter of fine judgement," he added. Paul Braithwaite of the EMAG said that since the society closed, 32,000 policyholders had died, and more were doing so at a rate of 100 every week. A spokesman for the Ombudsman said: "We don't really have any comment until a government response is made
------------------------------- merged -------------------------------
from the BBC
Relief plan for Equitable victims
Rodger Watts lost thousands invested in Equitable Life
The government will compensate those policyholders "hardest hit" by the collapse of life insurer Equitable Life, the Treasury has announced.
Minister Yvette Cooper also apologised to the million-and-a-half policyholders who had lost money.
A former appeal court judge will advise the government on who will receive payment and how much.
Opposition MPs and campaigners, however, have said the scheme does not go far enough.
Liz Kwantes, of the Equitable Life Members Help Group, said she was worried about further delays.
"By the time they decide how to measure it, we've lost another year," she said.
"A lot of people have lost a lot of money. People have had a hard time - some have lost houses, their health has gone," she added.
Regulatory failure
More than eight years after the Equitable closed to new customers, the government has admitted that some regulatory bodies were partly to blame.
"We agree there has been maladministration in several areas and that government action is merited," said Ms Cooper.
"And I wish to apologise to policy holders on behalf of the public bodies and successive governments responsible for the regulation of Equitable Life between 1990 and 2001, for the maladministration we believe has taken place," she told MPs.
We want to focus on those who have been hardest hit
Yvette Cooper, Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Who will get compensation?
This was highlighted in a critical report published last year by the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, who called on the government to establish a compensation scheme.
It is thought that more than a million of the 1.5 million people who had Equitable polices in 2001 have seen the value of their investments slashed, in some cases by as much as 50%.
However, it is not yet clear who will be offered any money, or how much.
In addition, Yvette Cooper told MPs that any eventual payments would still have to "take account of the position of the public finances".
Liberal Democrat spokesman Vince Cable called on the government to go further.
"After bailing out both Icelandic and nationalised bank depositors, Equitable Life investors will not be able to understand why they are being treated less favourably."
Conservative spokesman Mark Hoban said the scheme was "about means-testing a compensation rather than compensating people for injustice."
Management responsibility
Ms Cooper pointed out that the official report by Lord Penrose in 2004 had pinpointed the society's management as being mainly responsible for its financial problems.
EQUITABLE: KEY EVENTS
January 1999: Equitable tries to abandon a guaranteed payment it can no longer afford
July 2000: The House of Lords says Equitable must honour its original commitments, forcing the company to put itself up for sale
December 2000: Equitable Life closes to new business after failing to find a buyer
March 2004: Lord Penrose's report says the society was the "author of its own misfortune"
July 2008: The Parliamentary Ombudsman says regulators failed to protect policyholders and calls for a compensation fund
Timeline: The Equitable Life saga
What went wrong at Equitable?
And she told MPs that policyholders could not expect to be fully compensated for all their losses.
The former appeal court judge Sir John Chadwick has been asked to advise how the payment scheme should work.
He has been asked to advise the government "as swiftly as possible" on the extent of relative losses by the Equitable policyholders, the payments that might be due to any maladministration, and which groups of policyholders had suffered most.
"We want to focus on those who have been hardest hit," Ms Cooper told MPs.
"We would expect it [the scheme] to include looking at the extent of somebody's losses, how great the losses were but also perhaps looking at how great they were as a proportion of their income," she explained.
Vanni Treves, the chairman of Equitable Life since 2001, offered a "muted welcome" to the plan, and said he would help by offering advice to Sir John, as well as full access to the society's records. But he said it would be wrong for there to be any element of "means testing" in the eventual payouts. "The Ombudsman was very clear that losses that were suffered by huge numbers of policyholders should be made good, independent of the financial situation of individual policyholders," he said.
Savers await Equitable decision
The Equitable crisis hit more than a million policy holdersSavers who lost money in the Equitable Life assurance company could be offered compensation by the government in an announcement due later.
The long-awaited Treasury statement is expected to be made on Thursday.
Last July the Parliamentary Ombudsman called for compensation for more than a million policyholders in the society.
Ann Abraham said maladministration was partly to blame for savings, mainly private pensions, being slashed after the society's near-collapse in 2000.
"This has to be welcome news for the society and its members," said an Equitable Life spokesman.
But Paul Braithwaite, of the Equitable Members Action Group (EMAG), doubted "full compensation", which he put at about £4.5bn, would be offered to Equitable policyholders.
"If true, this is an about-turn by the government," he added.
"The government has spent years delaying and denying and we have learned not to trust them," he said.
Tribunal
The Daily Telegraph claimed the Treasury would announce the establishment of an independent tribunal to decide exactly who should be compensated, and by how much.
The Equitable Life affair is a saga of maladministration that ran throughout the 1990s Simon Morris, Cameron McKenna
Until now, the government has argued that the failure of the Equitable, one of the the UK's biggest pension companies, was the fault of its own management.
The government's arguments relied heavily on the findings of an official report by Lord Penrose in 1994.
He decided that although regulation of the Equitable had failed, "principally, the society was the author of its own misfortunes".
It had, he found, declared its investment policies to be worth far more than was really the case, and had made promises to some savers - those with guaranteed annuity rates (GAR) - that could not be fulfilled.
That position was crystallised in 2000 when the courts told the Equitable it would have to put aside £1.5bn - money it did not have - to make good its promises to those GAR holders.
In the wake of that decision, the society's executives decided in December that year to close it to new business and put it up for sale.
Maladministration
Arguments about who was to blame have continued since then.
Last year, an inquiry by the Ombudsman - her second into the matter - pointed to numerous official failings over the space of a decade, which had allowed the society to exaggerate its financial health for many years.
Ann Abraham said the government should pay compensationMs Abraham concluded that some regulators and government departments, including the Department of Trade and Industry, the Government Actuary's Department, and the Financial Services Authority, had failed to do their jobs properly and oversee the Equitable adequately.
She said the Equitable had been in a "dire" financial position since 1990 and had been allowed to continue trading, and selling policies to new savers, long past the point when it should have been closed.
"The Equitable Life affair is a saga of maladministration that ran throughout the 1990s," said Simon Morris, of law firm Cameron McKenna.
"The regulators ignored warnings that Equitable Life wasn't being properly run, didn't carefully study the information that Equitable Life provided and didn't properly exercise their powers to protect policyholders," he added.
Fine judgement
Even if there is a change of heart by the government, which has so far argued that taxpayers cannot be expected to provide compensation for commercial losses, it does not mean that surviving Equitable policyholders can expect money soon.
"The establishment of a tribunal to calculate compensation will just be the first step in what could prove to a complicated and lengthy process, involving hundreds of thousands of members, each with their own individual policy details," warned Tom McPhail, head of pensions research at independent financial advisor Hargreaves Lansdown.
"Disentangling regulatory failure from management incompetence will be a matter of fine judgement," he added. Paul Braithwaite of the EMAG said that since the society closed, 32,000 policyholders had died, and more were doing so at a rate of 100 every week. A spokesman for the Ombudsman said: "We don't really have any comment until a government response is made
------------------------------- merged -------------------------------
from the BBC
Relief plan for Equitable victims
Rodger Watts lost thousands invested in Equitable Life
The government will compensate those policyholders "hardest hit" by the collapse of life insurer Equitable Life, the Treasury has announced.
Minister Yvette Cooper also apologised to the million-and-a-half policyholders who had lost money.
A former appeal court judge will advise the government on who will receive payment and how much.
Opposition MPs and campaigners, however, have said the scheme does not go far enough.
Liz Kwantes, of the Equitable Life Members Help Group, said she was worried about further delays.
"By the time they decide how to measure it, we've lost another year," she said.
"A lot of people have lost a lot of money. People have had a hard time - some have lost houses, their health has gone," she added.
Regulatory failure
More than eight years after the Equitable closed to new customers, the government has admitted that some regulatory bodies were partly to blame.
"We agree there has been maladministration in several areas and that government action is merited," said Ms Cooper.
"And I wish to apologise to policy holders on behalf of the public bodies and successive governments responsible for the regulation of Equitable Life between 1990 and 2001, for the maladministration we believe has taken place," she told MPs.
We want to focus on those who have been hardest hit Yvette Cooper, Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Who will get compensation?
This was highlighted in a critical report published last year by the Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, who called on the government to establish a compensation scheme.
It is thought that more than a million of the 1.5 million people who had Equitable polices in 2001 have seen the value of their investments slashed, in some cases by as much as 50%.
However, it is not yet clear who will be offered any money, or how much.
In addition, Yvette Cooper told MPs that any eventual payments would still have to "take account of the position of the public finances".
Liberal Democrat spokesman Vince Cable called on the government to go further.
"After bailing out both Icelandic and nationalised bank depositors, Equitable Life investors will not be able to understand why they are being treated less favourably."
Conservative spokesman Mark Hoban said the scheme was "about means-testing a compensation rather than compensating people for injustice."
Management responsibility
Ms Cooper pointed out that the official report by Lord Penrose in 2004 had pinpointed the society's management as being mainly responsible for its financial problems.
EQUITABLE: KEY EVENTS January 1999: Equitable tries to abandon a guaranteed payment it can no longer afford
July 2000: The House of Lords says Equitable must honour its original commitments, forcing the company to put itself up for sale
December 2000: Equitable Life closes to new business after failing to find a buyer
March 2004: Lord Penrose's report says the society was the "author of its own misfortune"
July 2008: The Parliamentary Ombudsman says regulators failed to protect policyholders and calls for a compensation fund
Timeline: The Equitable Life saga
What went wrong at Equitable?
And she told MPs that policyholders could not expect to be fully compensated for all their losses.
The former appeal court judge Sir John Chadwick has been asked to advise how the payment scheme should work.
He has been asked to advise the government "as swiftly as possible" on the extent of relative losses by the Equitable policyholders, the payments that might be due to any maladministration, and which groups of policyholders had suffered most.
"We want to focus on those who have been hardest hit," Ms Cooper told MPs.
"We would expect it [the scheme] to include looking at the extent of somebody's losses, how great the losses were but also perhaps looking at how great they were as a proportion of their income," she explained.
Vanni Treves, the chairman of Equitable Life since 2001, offered a "muted welcome" to the plan, and said he would help by offering advice to Sir John, as well as full access to the society's records. But he said it would be wrong for there to be any element of "means testing" in the eventual payouts. "The Ombudsman was very clear that losses that were suffered by huge numbers of policyholders should be made good, independent of the financial situation of individual policyholders," he said.
