Years ago, the Endowment Savings Plan was a common feature in many households, this has now practically died out due to all sorts of reasons, including bad press, and mis selling scandals, a lot of this bad press was unjustified as millions of people were not saving any thing at all on a regular basis and had no other savings to rely on.
There are still many ways to save regularly to accumulate large tax free lump sums for a future date. With access to top performing funds and asset classes, ease of access and penalty free withdrawals, variable flexible premium contributions, be it monthly or yearly it is a great way of building up cash reserves.