Should you cash in your endowment or borrow against it? To get the sums right you will need to consult an IFA armed with all the salient facts regarding your personal situation, but the following pointers will aim you in the right direction.
Usually you can advantageously borrow from your own Assurer under your own policy (hey it's your money right!) up to roughly 80% of the surrender value for the remaining length of your policy up to the natural maturity date. Applied rates of interest vary between different Insurance Companies but generally speaking will be 2-3% points above the applied Bank of England base rate. Now here is the difficult bit. If you fail to repay any of the capital or maintain interest re-payments the debt so engendered will definitely eat into the final maturity value thereby reducing the anticipated payout.
However, if your chosen Assurer were to show startling investment performance your final bonus could nullify the loan taken out earlier on.
What are the options? Well you could surrender the policy back to the original issuer, or seek to sell it in the traded endowment market. Whichever option you choose will have its perils, because you will lose the benefit of death cover, and if you look to replace it later on you may be suffering from health problems, and you will most certainly be older, both scenarios triggering of a higher cost of replacement cover.
As we said at the start before taking any action take advice for your own particular circumstances, and act accordingly.