Did you specifically subscribe to this as a pension or a life assurance/savings scheme? It's probably a long time ago now but do you hold any paperwork which could suggest you might possibly have been a victim of mis-selling? Because of the dive in the stock market in recent times, many people will have been relying on these type of With Profits savings schemes to pay off mortgages, etc. and will find themselves in a shortfall. There's very little you can do about it although it may be worth checking whether you can let the plan run on for a further period of time in the hope of a stock market rise. However, if you were relying on this as a pension and you need it now there's probably little that can be done. I think the sad moral of your story is that when it comes to retirement planning it pays to hedge your bets and spread your long term savings over various different methods in the hope that if one method does not succeed, other options will perform a little better.