Category Archives: Money

Watchdog summons UK bank bosses to discuss weak savings rates

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Financial Conduct Authority to meet executives on Thursday as part of its investigation into savings market

UK bank bosses have been summoned to a meeting with the financial watchdog this week amid mounting concerns that they are profiting from rising interest rates by offering paltry savings rates to customers.

Executives from the big high street names Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, HSBC and Barclays, as well as from smaller lenders, are due to attend a meeting at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on Thursday to discuss concerns that savings rates are lagging far behind the soaring costs of mortgages and loans.

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California man hid mother’s death for more than 30 years to collect benefits

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Donald Felix Zampach collected over $830,000 in his mother’s social security and military retirement payments

A California man has pleaded guilty to hiding his mother’s death for more than three decades while he collected her social security and military retirement payments, a scheme the US attorney said is believed to be the longest-running and largest fraud of its kind in the district.

Donald Felix Zampach of Poway, about 20 miles north of San Diego, collected over $830,000 of public funds and nearly $30,000 in fraudulently opened credit cards over the course of three decades, US attorney Randy Grossman said last week.

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International Energy Agency warns of higher bills this winter

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Fatih Birol says China’s economic recovery combined with harsh winter could pile pressure on gas supplies

The head of the International Energy Agency has said energy prices may spike again this winter, forcing government to subsidise bills – just days after state support for UK households fell away.

Fatih Birol said a rapid improvement in the Chinese economy, coupled with a harsh winter, could put pressure on gas supplies and push up bills for consumers.

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Direct Line ordered to review five years of car claims after underpayments

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Insurer told to reassess vehicle write-offs to identify any unfair settlements

Britain’s second-biggest car insurer, Direct Line, has been ordered to go back through five years of claims after admitting it had underpaid some customers who had their cars and vans written off.

After an investigation into the car insurance market that began in December 2022, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), this week ordered Direct Line to conduct a review of claims where vehicles had been written off “to identify any policyholders who received unfair settlements and provide them with appropriate redress”.

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Water firms push for bills in England to rise by up to 40%, say reports

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Plans drawn up to pay for cost of dealing with sewage crisis and climate emergency

Water companies are reportedly pushing for bills in England to rise by up to 40% under plans being drawn up to pay for the cost of dealing with the sewage crisis and the climate emergency.

The increases are due to be announced next year and could drive annual bills up from an average of £450 to £680 in parts of the country by the end of the decade, according to a Times report citing consultation documents.

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‘We’re kicking ourselves that we didn’t do a five-year mortgage fix in 2021’

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Anguished families talk about how the Bank of England’s 13th consecutive interest hike is affecting them – and their fears for the future

Liam, 36, a senior IT manager and married father-of-one from Newcastle upon Tyne, is one of millions of homeowners whose mortgage payments will rise even higher after the Bank of England on Thursday put up the base interest rate to 5% – a 15-year high.

Together with his husband, Liam bought his four-bedroom house in 2019 for £269k, and the couple’s three-year mortgage deal, refixed at 1.64% in 2020 just before the first lockdown, expired in March.

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From Brexit to Beyoncé: why UK inflation is still so painfully high

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The cost of living is falling in Europe and the US but is still rising in Britain. We look at the major culprits

The Bank of England has struggled to understand why inflation remains high in the UK. It has fallen in France, Germany, the US and especially Spain, where inflation dropped to 2.9% in May compared with the UK figure of 8.7%. Here we look at the many reasons for the current crisis.

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Labour piles pressure on Sunak with plan to prevent ‘mortgage catastrophe’

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Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves says party would force banks to take a range of steps to protect borrowers

Labour has piled further pressure on Rishi Sunak to take action to help struggling mortgage holders as the Bank of England prepares to raise interest rates again to levels not seen since before the 2008 financial crash.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said on Wednesday that if Labour were currently in power, it would force banks to offer a range of support to borrowers, including letting them move on to interest-only mortgages and extending their repayment period.

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Sunak, Hunt and homebuyers brace for an economic Big Wednesday

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The midweek inflation bulletin could be the most significant piece of government data published this year

This Wednesday will mark the longest day of the year and not long after the sun comes up the Office for National Statistics (ONS) will publish its latest cost of living bulletin. To say the data is eagerly awaited is an understatement. There is unlikely to be a more significant piece of official data released in the current parliament.

The reason is simple. Despite raising interest rates 12 times since December 2021 in an attempt to quell upward price pressures, inflation is proving harder to shift than the Bank of England imagined.

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UK homeowners face huge rise in payments when fixed-rate mortgages expire

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More than 2.4m deals are ending in 2024, raising fears of financial timebomb

More than a quarter of UK homeowners on a fixed-rate mortgage are heading for sharp increase in monthly payments before the next election, in a financial timebomb that will rock the Conservatives just as voters prepare to choose the next government.

With the Bank of England expected to increase its key interest rate next week for the 13th time, figures shared with the Guardian by UK Finance, the banking industry trade body, show more than 2.4m fixed-rate homeowner deals will expire between now and the end of 2024.

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‘I’m left with nothing’: Nigerians feel brunt of economic shakeup

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President Tinubu’s policies please foreign investors, but a devalued currency and soaring petrol prices mean ‘national sacrifice mode’ is widely unpopular

Nigerians are feeling the strain as their new president pushes through a series of unpopular policies that have earned him praise from foreign investors.

Bola Tinubu, who was sworn in on 29 May, has surprised many observers by taking a running start to his tenure of Africa’s most populous country. In little over two weeks he has banished a longstanding petrol subsidy, ejected the country’s central bank governor and ended restrictions on the rate of the naira, Nigeria’s currency.

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UK government urged to outline plans to help with winter energy bills

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Report by cross-party MPs criticises previous ‘lack of urgency in addressing market failures’

MPs have urged the government to set out its plans to protect households from high energy bills this winter as they said about 1.7 million people, including some of the most vulnerable groups, had been left waiting too long to receive previous support.

The public accounts committee (PAC) said that although schemes were introduced quickly, the government “did not have the bandwidth” to make sure help reached all groups in a timely fashion.

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Labour says ‘Tory mortgage penalty’ costs homeowners extra £7,000 a year

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Opposition finds fallout of Liz Truss mini-budget has raised average mortgage interest payments by £150 a week in two years

Homeowners are being hit with a “Tory mortgage penalty” of £7,000 a year with interest rates triple what they were two years ago, according to Labour.

Pat McFadden, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, blamed what he called the “reckless economic gamble” taken by the Conservatives during September’s mini-budget when Liz Truss was prime minister.

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Housebuilders cut back on construction as UK mortgage rate rises spook buyers

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Work on residential building sites slips in May to weakest level since 2009

Britain’s housebuilders are cutting back on the construction of new homes amid signs that potential buyers are being spooked by the prospect of increases in mortgage rates over the coming months.

The latest report on the construction sector found that work on residential building sites slipped in May to the weakest level since 2009, apart from when sites were locked down during the Covid pandemic.

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No point in food price measures without targeting small stores, Which? warns

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Consumer group tells chancellor ‘blanket approach’ will not address poor households’ access to affordable food

UK ministers’ efforts to reduce soaring food shopping bills “won’t touch the sides” without measures to make small grocery stores more affordable for low-income households, the chancellor has been warned.

Which?, the consumer group, has written to Jeremy Hunt over concerns that a blanket approach to lowering supermarket bills will not address the problem of accessibility to affordable food, after reports that ministers are considering a voluntary price cap scheme.

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Thames Water accused of ‘flimsy PR stunt’ over bonus as boss’s pay swells

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Sarah Bentley lands £1.5m package despite saying she would shun bonus amid criticism of water companies

Thames Water has been accused of conducting a “flimsy PR stunt” as it prepares to report that its chief executive has landed nearly double her annual salary with a £1.5m pay package – after announcing that she would shun her bonus amid intense criticism of Britain’s water companies.

Sarah Bentley said last month that she and the firm’s finance chief, Alastair Cochran, would forgo their bonuses and any payments due under long-term incentive plans for the 2022-23 financial year.

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Holiday lets nearly negate supply of new homes in tourist areas, study shows

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Campaigners say second homes and holiday lets are taking homes away from residents in hotspots such as Devon and Cumbria

The supply of new homes in some tourist hotspots is being almost completely negated by the rise of second homes and holiday lets, analysis has revealed.

In the Copeland area of the Lake District, which includes the beauty spot of Scafell Pike, there were 426 new homes created in the last three years. Over the same period, 407 existing homes were converted to commercial holiday lets or second homes.

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Lone renter in ‘David and Goliath’ row with Montreal developers

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Carla White’s battle has shone a light on city’s lack of affordable new housing for those on low incomes

A single tenant in a Montreal apartment block has halted a multimillion-dollar development project in a standoff that has focused fresh attention on the lack of affordable housing in major Canadian cities.

Property developer Mondev has been trying for years to persuade Carla White to move from her small C$400-a-month (£238) apartment so it can demolish a row of mostly abandoned buildings and build 176 luxury apartments.

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HSBC increases interest rates on some savings accounts

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Rises of up to 0.75 percentage points follow increases at First Direct

Customers of HSBC will receive a boost to their savings after the bank announced an increase to interest rates, as Britons enjoy some of the highest rates in more than a decade.

The lender is increasing rates on some of its savings accounts, with increases of up to 0.75 percentage points.

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Agreed house sales in UK at highest point this year, says Zoopla

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But property website warns that rebound in activity could be hit by rising mortgage rates

More prospective house sellers are returning to the UK’s property market, pushing agreed home sales to their highest point of the year in May, according to Zoopla, although it warned that the rebound in activity could be knocked by rising mortgage rates.

House prices have fallen by 1.3% nationally over the past six months, the property website found, but the speed of price falls has been decreasing as buyer confidence slowly improves.

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