I suspect very few under 50 experienced this directly. Many regulations were put onto the industry as a result and the internet has enabled a far better flow of information so that it's easier to be well informed of choices instead of having to rely on an "expert" for access to the information. Who remembers when shopping for competitive car insurance meant either sitting on the phone for hours calling everyone or popping into your local branch of Swinton's.
Very much this.
As a finance person at the start of my career I took out my first mortgage (a repayment) when all my friends and their parents were taking out endowments.
Person after person told me I was mad and I should be getting an endowment.
My response was always I want low risk for me house and will take higher risk elsewhere. None "got" the risk element until years later.
It was a little wild West, although as ever with financial products the majority of the population never understood. I had a friend who was selling them and he had to produce a low, mid and high investment return.
It was always the same in his words and what I saw.
1) People would ignore the low after being told it was based on returns below what the market had performed in recent times. So 1 mentally dismissed.
2) People would base their outgoings on the average
3) People would get the extra from the higher into their heads and expect something like a car worth of extra at the end.
I mean literally 9 out of 10 would think like that by the time they had ended their session with an IFA.
Most mis-selling was not really, but the companies couldn't defend their positions in many cases with no documentation to back it up.
For most people endowments were not that much of an issue, but plenty never bother to check anything so when suggestions (they pretty much always were suggestions until the very end) came for upping payments many just ignored them.
What endowments confirmed was that most consumers are not sophisticated enough to be able to be linked to something that requires monitoring and action.
Hence sales people could influence to lean that way, but again, the product wasn't a bad product if there was evidence the person wouldn't just ignore all the paperwork and expect the large cheque to land on the mat in 25 years. (alas I would say most were of that mindset)