Category Archives: Finance

The Finance Services Authorities (FSA) and the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) have issued a joint warning to financial services companies against coming up with new types of payment protection insurance (PPI) policies.

PPI policies were sold to people who had mortgages, loans or credit cards. These policies were mainly sold by the banks, but some other firms had been selling them too.

The authorities have indicated that they will be monitoring finance firms for any new and potentially damaging PPI policies that may emerge. They have also indicated that they will use their powers to prevent these loan insurance policies from being sold if they are found to be damaging to customers’ interests.

Earlier this year, the banks were…

Website owners will soon have to change the way some of their forms are laid out as the EU moves to make online shopping more straightforward and safer.

In a move that EU ministers hope will protect consumers, websites will not be allowed to ‘pretick’ any of the check boxes in their online forms if they would result in additional charges. This will prevent customers entering into so-called ‘cost traps’, where they are lured by the promise of something that is free, or are given a price which then increases when pre-ticked boxes are applied for additional fees.

For example, low-cost airlines cannot be sold with a pre-selected add-on amount for travel insurance which the customer must deselect themselves. Services which provide free mobile games…

UK drivers whose income has been squeezed by the credit crisis and the recession are buying less petrol, according to a recent report from the AA.

In the first half of 2011, the amount of petrol consumed by British drivers has fallen. Drivers used 1.7 billion less litres of petrol and diesel than was consumed in the first half of 2008. This represents a 15% reduction in petrol consumption following the credit crunch and recession.

Environmental campaigners have welcomed the news. It is estimated that the reduction in fuel consumption will have saved approximately 4 tonnes of CO2 emissions from exhaust fumes.

This is the equivalent to the amount of CO2 which 0.5% of the total number of broadleaf trees in the UK are able…

Tesco, the biggest supermarket chain in the UK, is cutting its Clubcard rewards scheme in half and removing the amount of buy one get one free offers in stores.

Tesco says it will be focusing on reducing the prices of everyday goods on the shelf from Monday 26th September, 2010. More than 3,000 products have already been discounted, including 14p off certain types of bread and 35p off a kilo of potatoes.

The move is thought to be in response to poor performance as Tesco’s dominance in the UK supermarket price war begins to slip.

The Clubcard scheme is hugely popular and now has more than 15 million members in the UK alone. Members can scan a barcode on a card, keyring or on the…

Budget flight operator Ryanair is again causing controversy as it prepares to launch a new pre-paid Mastercard, the Ryanair Cash Passport, in the UK. The card will be rolled out across Europe over the course of 2011.

At present, Ryanair charges a card processing fee of up to £6 per person per flight when a customer books online. This means a family of four would pay almost £45 on top of the cost of their flights, purely in debit or credit card processing fees.

Up until now, customers could use a pre-paid Mastercard from any provider to avoid the fee.

Popular pre-paid cards include the Caxton and FairFX travel money cards. The airline says that as many as 25% of their customers now use pre-paid…

An estimated £265,000 per day is charged on the purchase of aeroplane tickets. The Which? consumer group lodged a ‘super complaint’ with the government in March this year, indicating that these surcharges are significantly harming consumer interests.

The Which? super complaint was submitted to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) which is responsible for enforcing consumer protection law and competition law.

The complaint called for the OFT to investigate the excessive surcharges. At the end of June, the OFT proposed a ban on the surcharges, indicating that an amendment to the current Payment Services Regulations, controlled by the Treasury, would be an easy way to implement the change.

However, despite recommendations to put an end to these surcharges, the government have yet to take action,…

The British and Swiss governments have agreed a tax deal in an attempt to regain some of the tax on an estimated £125 billion which is hidden in the Swiss banking system.

The tax agreement means that any British residents with money held in Swiss bank accounts will now face a tax charge from 2013.

The money held in the accounts will face an initial one off ‘clear the slate’ tax levy in January 2013. This charge will vary depending on how long the account has been held and the balance of the account up to December 2010. The amount of the charges will be between 19% and 34% and the account holders will be able to retain their anonymity.

Once the initial charge has…

A recent survey has suggested that surveyors are still showing pessimism in the housing market.

The survey also indicated that estate agents were only able to sell an average of 14.2 properties last month, the lowest figure for 2 years. Furthermore, there has been an increase in the average number of houses on an estate agents books from 69.7 houses to 70.2.

The housing market has been been slow for a while, and the figures for July show that house prices have fallen slightly. According to a survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics), the majority of surveyors are expecting this trend to continue for the rest of the quarter.

Some research conducted by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has suggested that…

New guidance is to be released by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) at the end of this year. It will recommend that banks start publishing the current interest rates that are applied to every customer’s bank and savings accounts on their bank statements.

Mark Hoban, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, has confirmed that he is fully backing this new guidance as it will help to promote transparency. In an interview with the Moneysavingsexpert.com website, he suggested that this is an important practice for the banks to adopt as it would help people to shop around for the best interest rates.

Moneysavingsexpert.com began a campaign in 2009 to force the banks to publish the interest rates of an account on the bank statements which they…

The French insurance firm AXA has called for the government to take action and cut the fees that personal injury lawyers are able to charge to liable insurance companies in ‘no win, no fee’ cases.

In a ‘no win, no fee’ personal injury claim, the lawyers’ charges are claimed from the insurance company that the claim has been brought against. This practice has led to a profitable business for many solicitors firms and insurance companies and has led to the development of a ‘referral industry’ over the past 20 years.

In the 1990s, strict regulations that had governed the marketing of law services were lifted in order to encourage more competition and provide cheaper prices for customers. This has allowed personal injury lawyers to buy…