Money Fight Club has been through a few rounds with the High Street banks as they have invented new ways to part customers from their money over the years. The mis-selling of personal pensions, endowment mortgages, payment protection insurance and interest rate swaps have cost customers billions of pounds and damaged the reputation and the finances of the banks. Now the Banking Standards Review headed up by Sir Richard Lambert, former editor of the Financial Times, has proposed the setting up of an independent body to raise standards and to bring ethics into banking. It does not go far enough, […]
Category: Banks
Banking… standards?
The Banking Standards Review from Sir Richard Lambert proposes an independent body that will champion better banking standards. What’s not to like? But before anything can happen it has posed 19 questions on ethics, training, the assessment of a bank’s code of conduct, best practice, competence and much more. Sir Richard wants the body to raise standards of competence and conduct in banking but it is likely to fail abysmally if it becomes a “members organisation for bankers.” How can the markets and more importantly the customers begin to trust banks if their new body is little more than a […]
40 year mortgage loans – it’s only lenders that win
Lenders have a new wheeze when it comes to lending money to home buyers. Now interest-only loans have been outlawed for all except buy-to-let borrowers they have moved to the next best thing (for lenders, that is, not borrowers) – 40 year mortgage loans. In particular, lenders are circling first time buyers who are back in the market. According to the mortgage statistics for last year, mortgage approvals rose by 122,000 to 734,969. First-time buyer numbers are well up. For example,they took out 27,000 loans in November, 2013, a rise of just 0.7% compared to October, but up 24% compared […]
Complaints about packaged bank accounts double – have you got one?
Yet another report shows how careful we have to be when visiting our bank branch. The latest statistics from the Financial Ombudsman reveal that large numbers of bank customers are complaining that they have been mis-sold expensive packaged bank accounts. These are the sorts of accounts that come with all sorts of bells and whistles on them, such as travel insurance, all fine and dandy if you need everything you get but otherwise an expensive way to bank. Complaints have more than doubled on 2012-13 and some bank customers were unaware that they had “bought” a packaged account. The most […]