Finance Matters

• 17Oct

  Check your critical illness cover

  Insurance No Comments

  From This is Money:

  Critical illness insurance pays out a lump sum on diagnosis of a serious illness and the £50,000 payment on Meryn’s Scottish Widows policy was a life-changing sum, enabling her and husband Brian, a 38-year-old manager for a construction company, to pay off their mortgage.
  Meryn, 47, a bank administrator from Cardiff, says: ‘It was only when I contacted our financial adviser in January this year to talk about getting some insurance for our mortgage payments that a potential claim on my critical illness cover came to light.
  ‘I hadn’t spoken to our adviser in years, but I mentioned my battle against cancer in passing and it was at that point that he said I probably had a valid claim on my policy.’
  Meryn and Brian, who have a nine-year-old son, Joshua, took out a life and critical illness policy shortly after their son was born. They had continued to pay the £23-a-month premium, but had lost the documentation. At the time of Meryn’s diagnosis the policy was the furthest…

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• 17Oct

  Friendly societies set for spate of mergers

  Insurance No Comments

  From This is Money:

  Yet this year the dancing will be more frenetic – and not just because of the Chilli Pipers’ reputation for ‘jock and roll’. It is because the 15th annual conference of the Association of Friendly Societies will be the last.
  ‘The skirl of the Pipers’ bagpipes will provide a fitting swan song,’ remarked one member booked for the two-and-ahalfday conference costing £359.
  The AFS’s demise is indicative of the troubled state the sector finds itself in.
  For numerous member-owned societies, formed to provide working men with funeral and sickness benefits in exchange for a small, weekly payment, the writing is on the wall.
  There are 45 friendly societies that belong to the AFS with assets of £15bn, the biggest being LV=, the old Liverpool Victoria. Among their ranks are the weird and wacky – such as Oddfellows, Druids and Anglo Saxons – selling a mixture of with-profits, income protection and child trust funds.
  Most executives are male, middle-aged and friendly societ…

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• 17Oct

  Halifax estate agents sold for £1

  Business No Comments

  From The BBC:

  Lloyds Banking Group has agreed to sell its Halifax estate agency business to LSL Property Services for £1, and said 460 jobs would go.The loss-making business has 218 offices, 93 of which are franchise operations. There are 121 Halifax banking counters located in estate agents, which will close down in early 2010. Branches will be rebranded as one of LSL’s existing brands: Your Move, Reeds Rains or Intercounty. Lloyds said that 1,050 employees would be transferred to LSL after the sale and 360 of the 460 jobs due to go will be full-time positions. ‘No longer integral’It said that compulsory redundancies would be a last resort. The jobs will go among staff operating the banking counters within estate agents. Lloyds said that the vast majority of the branches had a Halifax or Lloyds TSB branch within one mile of them. Lloyds said that the decision followed a strategic review, “which concluded that an estate agency operation is no longer integral to its business model”….

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• 17Oct

  Bid failure hits National Express

  Business No Comments

  From The BBC:

  Shares in National Express have fallen 26% after its largest shareholder withdrew a £765m takeover offer.Spain’s Cosmen family, which owns an 18.5% stake, had joined with private equity firm CVC on the bid. The CVC-Cosmen consortium said its offer would be withdrawn if not recommended by the board of National Express. Rival Stagecoach had agreed to buy National Express’s bus and rail operations if a deal went through. When the market opened, shares in the company fell 124p to 347p. At one stage, £250m was wiped from the value of the company. The Cosmens have announced that they will instead support plans for National Express, which has debts of nearly £1bn, to strengthen its finances by raising cash from shareholders. The consortium takeover offer was made after National Express lost the rights to the East Coast route. In July, the government said it would take the route back into public ownership after the company lost £20m in the first half of the year and suf…

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• 17Oct

  Fold-up bike ‘crazy guy’ receives royal award

  Business No Comments

  From The BBC:

  The man who invented the foldaway Brompton bicycle has been honoured by the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace for his lifelong obsession.Andrew Ritchie invented the diminutive bike in 1979 and has been tweaking the design ever since. After collecting the Prince Philip Designers Prize, Mr Ritchie said he was not finished yet and was still thinking about how to make the bike lighter. The portable bike folds down to barely bigger than its 16 inch (40cm) wheels. In a brief speech Mr Ritchie thanked some of his early financial backers, who had each invested £100 in the scheme. His obsession started in 1975 when he came across a different model and thought he could do better. Speaking after receiving the award, Mr Ritchie described himself as a “crazy guy” who had spent his time trying to create the most human-friendly product he could.
  Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
  James Waller of Evans Cycles shows how to fold and assemble a folding bike
  He sai…

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• 17Oct

  Troubleshooters lead loan review

  Money No Comments

  From The BBC:

  The government has appointed two troubleshooters to lead a review of student loans problems, which have left tens of thousands waiting for funds.Higher Education Minister David Lammy told MPs he was sorry students and their families had been worried and frustrated by poor customer service. Two independent experts have been appointed to head an internal review into the problems in loan applications. The Tories say it is a shambles causing “enormous distress to many students”. They tabled a debate in the Commons on the issue, after delays in the processing of loan applications left tens of thousands of students without their full loans and grants at the start of the university term. ‘Gone wrong’The independent experts are former London South Bank University vice-chancellor Sir Deian Hopkin and Bernadette Kenny of HM Revenue and Customs. Mr Lammy said the loans problems had “had a profoundly regrettable effect on individual students and their families”. The body responsible for organising…

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• 17Oct

  Halifax estate agents sold for £1

  Money No Comments

  From The BBC:

  Lloyds Banking Group has agreed to sell its Halifax estate agency business to LSL Property Services for £1, and said 460 jobs would go.The loss-making business has 218 offices, 93 of which are franchise operations. There are 121 Halifax banking counters located in estate agents, which will close down in early 2010. Branches will be rebranded as one of LSL’s existing brands: Your Move, Reeds Rains or Intercounty. Lloyds said that 1,050 employees would be transferred to LSL after the sale and 360 of the 460 jobs due to go will be full-time positions. ‘No longer integral’It said that compulsory redundancies would be a last resort. The jobs will go among staff operating the banking counters within estate agents. Lloyds said that the vast majority of the branches had a Halifax or Lloyds TSB branch within one mile of them. Lloyds said that the decision followed a strategic review, “which concluded that an estate agency operation is no longer integral to its business model”….

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• 17Oct

  Council pension fund assets fall

  Money No Comments

  From The BBC:

  The value of assets held by local authority pension funds in England and Wales fell by £24bn, or 19%, in the 2008-2009 financial year.The figures have been published by the department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). The actuarial firm Watson Wyatt said the drop was roughly equivalent to all the money the councils took in council tax that year. The drop reflects the effect of plunging share prices at the time. Watson Wyatt said that when the local authority schemes were formally revalued next year, they were likely to show a bigger deficit than before. “Private sector employers know only too well that volatility in the pension fund can eat into the revenues generated by their core business and local authorities are learning the same lesson,” said John Ball of Watson Wyatt. However, he said the news was not as bad as it seemed. “March was the worst time to take a snapshot of pension schemes’ assets and strong stock market performance since then means some of the money…

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• 17Oct

  High Court backs Equitable plan

  Money No Comments

  From The BBC:

  The High Court has approved the government’s plan for limited payments to those who lost money in the Equitable Life pension company.Last year, the Parliamentary Ombudsman called for a full compensation scheme for over one million Equitable members. The government’s rejection of that idea was challenged in a judicial review. But campaigners who launched the action say the court’s ruling means the government’s scheme will now have to cover more people than first planned. Lost savingsThe judicial review was brought by the Equitable Members Action Group (Emag).
  It challenged the refusal of the government to accept all the findings and recommendations of the Ombudsman’s report into the role of government departments in the Equitable Life collapse, published last year. The Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, found ten examples of maladministration which she said had contributed to the devastating losses suffered by pension savers with the Equitable after the society was forced to close in 2000. Instea…

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• 17Oct

  OFT to scrutinise online pricing

  Money No Comments

  From The BBC:

  Online pricing practices are to be investigated by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).Price comparison websites which claim to give the best deals will be examined in one study focusing on prices. It will also look at activities such as “drip pricing”, where charges and extras are added during the purchase. Another study will look at customised pricing, where prices are individually tailored using information collected about a consumer’s internet use. Which? magazine welcomed the investigation, claiming that some companies are misleading consumers in a way that would never be tolerated outside of the web. “With some of the extras that are added while you’re buying online, it’s like someone accompanying you on your weekly shopping and adding products into your basket without your knowledge”, Which? technology editor Matthew Bath told BBC News. “We think consumers should be aware of the final price from the beginning”. Under scrutinyThe pricing practices going under the microscope include:…

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