As the article mentions things like insurance and long term investments, annuities, stock certificates, and the like, are the ones where it makes the most sense to be the most exacting in enforcing contract terms. That's essentially the nature of the business, and in a world where people can hedge two massive sums of money against each other for hundredths of a percent gains and so on, it does make sense for the financial system to decide that this level of precision should be considered inviolate.
There is precedent for the argument that very long term arrangements (sometimes called "Methuselah Trusts"[0]) involving compounding interest should be prohibited or changeable in some circumstances but the lifetime of a single person would really never fall into that category.
Also of note in this specific instance, the "error" on the banks part is not a case of overlooked fine print, obliviousness to an extreme edge case situation that seems highly implausible, or a customer acting in somewhat bad faith or wastefully, which you could argue gifting first class tickets to random strangers is.
In this instance the whole point of the investment was to allow wealthy purchasers to make backward looking adjustments to a held investment portfolio. Which is, in fact, exactly what has happened.
There is precedent for the argument that very long term arrangements (sometimes called "Methuselah Trusts"[0]) involving compounding interest should be prohibited or changeable in some circumstances but the lifetime of a single person would really never fall into that category.
Also of note in this specific instance, the "error" on the banks part is not a case of overlooked fine print, obliviousness to an extreme edge case situation that seems highly implausible, or a customer acting in somewhat bad faith or wastefully, which you could argue gifting first class tickets to random strangers is.
In this instance the whole point of the investment was to allow wealthy purchasers to make backward looking adjustments to a held investment portfolio. Which is, in fact, exactly what has happened.
[0] http://www.nickbaily.com/nick_bailys_002/2015/01/the-dangers...