Sub Prime Lenders and Insurers

"At last" I thought, after 25 years of repayments, the maytrees' mortgage was due to be paid off in February 2008.
Do the insurance companies and banks who were only too glad
to lend the money in the first place and take the repayments with profits
for the following 25 years, make it easy for us to sign off and become the full
owners of our small chunk of real estate in SW20? Alas, an emphatic "no", is the answer to that question.

The insurers waited until year 24, before issuing dire warnings about only paying far less than the v. attractive lump sums they forcast 25 years ago. They then created huge amounts of red tape and delays before actually paying anything over to the bank.

The bank's reaction was, instead
of simply giving our lawyers a simple note of the balance required to clear the
mortgage after receiving the smaller than predicted lump sum from the insurers,
to send a silly letter to mrs maytrees and I, talking about a c.£2k mortgage repayment shortfall, for which they were setting up a
monthly repayment amount of £11.

I wonder how many years trying to repay £2k at £11 a month would take to pay off and how much profit on that would accrue to the bank?

With all the talk of credit squeeze and people borrowing too much,
why is trying to repay made so difficult? Are there too many vested interests
keen to keep indebtedness as high as possible?

There must be.