Campaigners pursuing legal claims against insurance giant Nationale-Nederland for mis-selling investment-based savings schemes in the 1990s and 2000s are holding ING responsible.

ING, which owns Nationale-Nederland, acted as an intermediary and sold over 250,000 of the controversial policies. The foundation Stichting Woekerpolisproces (literally profiteering policy process) says it hopes to be able to reclaim €2.5bn from ING on behalf of its members.

The European Court of Justice is to rule on the case against Nationale Nederlanden shortly. The court’s advocate general has already recommended finding the insurance company guilty of mis-selling.

Investment-based savings schemes became controversial in 2006 because between 25% and 86% of the premium was being spent on costs (life insurance, commission and other costs) rather than investments. Some 6.5 million of these policies were sold.

Compensation

All the big financial services groups offered them and most have already paid out court-ordered compensation to policy-holders. In 2008, the financial services ombudsman ruled that policy-holders faced with costs over 3.5% of their total premium should get compensation.

According to financial expert Jeffrey Leichel, who represents another foundation set up to help people who lost money on investment-based savings policies, the banks are still earning €800m a year from them.

Leichel, chairman of the ODIN foundation, will tell current affairs programme Zembla on Wednesday night there are still some 2.5 million active policies with a value of €31bn.