Archive for June, 2009


Pension time bomb … have you done everything you wanted before you retire?


Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Tough news about pensions today as employers attempt to defuse the pension time bomb through closing their final salary pension scheme. This could lead to a saving of £4.5bn a year, according to BBC Online.

According to MGM Advantage, there are 2 million fewer people on final salary pensions schemes; this has, according to the Trades Union Congress and Office of National Statistics, led to a cut in pension contributions - from £7.77bn to £3.24bn. The reduction has even led to some commentators, such as Aston Goodey, suggesting that the final salary pension is nearing ‘extinction’.

These measures have been labelled by TUC member Brendan Barber as ’slash and burn’ techniques, and that a ‘populist and misleading campaign’ was being run, which was waging war against public sector pensions.

Findings by the ONS show that contributions to non-state pension schemes have been growing strongly, standing at £85.2bn; although only up on 2006 by 2%, contributions by employers to their funded occupational pension schemes dropped slightly from £38.7bn to £37bn.

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Households feel the heat as energy bills soar


Monday, June 29th, 2009

We’re lucky that this summer is shaping up nicely as we are facing bleak news that energy prices will be expected to soar to nearly £5,000 by 2020, Times Online reports.

The cause? A billion-pound investment programme.

Results from price comparison site Uswitch predict prices to go up nearly fourfold in comparison to what we are paying today. Uswitch has shown this by extrapolating trends in energy prices, as well as adding Britain’s investment in energy supplies over the next 15 years which will add another £548 a year to household bills.

Consumers will be further angered by the fact that energy companies have prevented falls in the price of gas reaching consumers. Theenergyshop.com has even shown this fall to be as great as 50% since August last year, yet we have only seen a fall of 5% in domestic bills. Only a further 10-15% could be justified.

The investment programme put forward will promise £234 billion in energy, £112.5 billion in renewable energy generation, £13bn on roll-out smart meters and £16bn on reducing carbon emissions. Now is the time really see Britain’s opinions about global warming - the talk the world has done on the importance of climate change and the various agreements at Kyoto etc. will pale in comparison to the importance of whether Britons will accept shouldering the burden of sustainable development. Everyone seems to be very positive about dealing with global warming but will people put their money where their mouth is?

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Holidaymakers need better protection, but not from the sun


Friday, June 26th, 2009

The summer is prime holiday time for 40 million of us Brits. Now there have been calls for the Government to look into the regulations covering holidays, according to BBC News. The Trading Standards authority have outlined that not only do package holidays coverage need to be reviewed but also that of holidays of any person going abroad, where regulation has been deemed to be outdated.

The outdated regulation has been levelled at the lack of ATOL protected holidays. ATOL protects against the travel agent going bankrupt and leaving passengers stranded. However, obviously in the current climate this is increasingly becoming an important aspect of any holiday making abroad. Vivid examples of this include XL which went down and led to thousands of people putting in claims for cancelled holidays.

Less than half of holidays are ATOL protected now, compared to 98% ten years ago. This is due to the increase of computer-customised holidays that mix elements of different holiday packages and subsequently aren’t fully ATOL protected.

Suggestions for rule changes include a blanket protection for all flights booked with scheduled airlines and protection for flights sold alongside another component, such as accommodation.

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FSA admits impotence as building societies are scrutinised


Thursday, June 25th, 2009

The blame game is in full swing again today as accusations are being thrown about by top members of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), reports Times Online. High-ranking officials have pointed their fingers at some of the biggest building societies in Britain, who are being accused of ignoring numerous warnings and threats put forward by the FSA to stem borrowing.

Nick Lock, the manager of the FSA’s retail firms division, spearheaded the criticism. Hugh May, quoting Lock at the Building Societies Association (BSA) annual conference in Harrogate, stated that ‘we have seen unsustainable margins on prime-lending, over-ambitious growth targets and a risk appetite that was too great’. May also points out that there were ‘fundamental mispricing and inadequate investment in risk management’.

A number of building societies have been hitting the wall over the last 12 months. Scarborough Building Society has been rescued by Skipton and in March Nationwide bought the best bits of Dumfermline which had incurred losses amounting to £26 million.

Building societies had apparently ignored warnings from the FSA which had been repeated ‘over and over again’. But this only illustrates the argument that financial turmoil is not due simply to the building societies and financial institutions, but also to the lack of regulation.

Why did the FSA have no teeth to ratify their warnings? It is surely their job to prevent this situation occurring. It’s ot hard to see why building societies and all financial institutions have exploited the deregulated system for all it’ worth. A little reading into rational choice theory and Mancur Olson’s collective action problem can even describe how it has actually been rational for financial institutions to act greedily in a situation where regulation is sparse (Olson and his counterparts in game theory and collective action problems stipulate that irrespective of whether you choose to benefit or not from greedily exploiting a market, your rivals will, which will be to your detriment; firms are myopic especially as long-term goals require irrational collective action).

It is strange therefore that the FSA readily decides to stand up and show how impotent and pathetic it has been in reigning in their greedy subjects - perhaps in admitting their weak behaviour they will be allotted more powers in the upcoming regulation proposals.

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Housing sales: green shoots or ’spring bounce’?


Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Optimistic findings today from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) which show that the number of homes being sold is continuing to rise, reports BBC Online. However, it is key to note that this may be due to the usual ’spring bounce’ period, when sales traditionally have tended to increase.

This complements or (could be attributed to) the increase in mortgage approvals in the last six months, highlighted by the British Bankers’ Association (BBA). The BBA put mortgage approvals up by 15.8%, at 31,162 since this time last year. But again the BBA points out the market as still subdued.

According to HMRC, 62,000 homes worth over £40,000+ have been sold in May, up 7% from last month. BBC then pointed out the truism that this is nowhere near the levels of the boom in housing.

Critics point out the usual spring bounce findings which occur every year, but, stripping out the seasonal factors, March saw a 40% leap in property sales from the month before. Perhaps, it can be argued, that green shoots are emerging in the property market. Home loan providers have even begun increasing their cost of fixed rate mortgages in the last couple of weeks in response to higher demand.

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King targets banks ‘too big to fail’


Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

An interesting opinion from the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, is that the banks ‘too big to fail’ should be prevented from getting that big in the first place. According to the Times Online King stresses this is not a personal ploy for power nor is it instigating a battle with the Treasury, but is in the country’s and taxpayers’ best interests.

This comes at a time when the chancellor, Alistair Darling, will be announcing proposals for regulation of the financial sector for the next ten years. The proposals will at large be based on the findings of Lord Turner’s report on the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

King’s remarks not only question the general size of banks but whether the banks are mixing high-street retail banking with high risk investment banking, which had caused so much trouble in the last couple of years. The issue of size and relative failure is a contentious issue, and many analysts have argued that the bigger banks were more likely to fail, and fail in a more expensive way to the taxpayer.

However, others highlight that even the relatively smaller banks have an impact, for instance Dunfermline, Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, and still needed to be saved. Even the biggest banks did not fail simply because of their size, for instance RBS’s disastrous acquisition of ABN Amro, leading to their needing to be rescued by the taxpayer.

The Swiss government is even considering measures to physically curb their big banks, UBS and Credit Suisse. However, one analyst argues this may lead to banks moving their headquarters abroad, and the last thing the country wants is a revenue drain abroad.

At the basis of Darling’s future proposals for regulation is the idea of responsible lending. Something we here at www.247Moneybox.com take very seriously indeed. When you apply for our cash loans, we want you to be sure you have thought ahead and can afford the repayment. Check out our lending guide if you need some assistance.

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Number of repossessions overestimated but still rising


Monday, June 22nd, 2009

Some relatively good news from the world of property repossession, BBC News Online has led with an article saying that predictions for repossessions for the rest of 2009 have been overestimated, but they do still remain high.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) had originally predicted the number of repossessions at 75,000 in last December; however, latest findings have put the level of repossessions closer to 65,000 - a drop of at least 10,000. Despite this, the level of repossessions has gone up overall by 50% in the last three months.

Even with the recalculation the CML states there are still no signs of a ‘robust recovery’, and attributes the repossession reduction to a number of factors not really related to the health of the economy. First of all, the reduction in interest rates, from 5% in October 2008 to 0.5% now, has alleviated homeowners from steep mortgage payments. In-court advice schemes have, according to the Housing Minister John Healey, prevented 4 out of 5 repossessions in court. Finally, not-for-profit organisations are soon to be piloting a £285m scheme to buy homes and affordably rent them out to struggling homeowners.

The CML, short of endorsing the government’s schemes, has said that they have allowed people to get in touch with their lenders and subsequently get help.

However, the CML highlight that job losses and reduced bonuses have made meeting payments extremely difficult. The CML predicts that these will get worse as the recession continues and predicts that 428,000 may get into arrears on their home loans.

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