Nationwide Building Society has launched a 25-year fixed rate mortgage at 5.49%, which it is offering borrowers at a time when the Bank of England has made three rate rises in the past nine months.
The deal is available on a limited basis, as it has only £50m to allocate to the product, and with the average […]

With the official arrival of British summertime on 25th March this year, gardeners have been warned by Co-operative Insurance (CIS) to make sure their equipment is properly insured or risk reaping heartache as the criminals come out in the better weather.
The warmer summers and a raft of popular TV gardening programmes have created a boom in […]

People in roughly similar financial situations often make completely different savings decisions, according to a report prepared by the Building Societies Association (BSA) that looked at how people arrive at their savings strategies.
When making the decision to save, people engage in a trade-off between the perceived costs and benefits of saving. There are many influences on […]

HSBC, one of the biggest banks in the world, is diverting less affluent customers to foreign call centres while its more affluent, and hence more profitable, clients are dealt with in the UK.
The bank has admitted filtering calls from its 8.5 million customer base with UK current accounts and transferring them to overseas call centres […]

More than 6,000 ex-employees of defunct car maker MG Rover are to receive their pensions from the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).
Almost 18 months after applying for rescue, when the company went into liquidation, the MG Rover pension scheme is now the full responsibility of the PPF, which was set up in 2005 to give a safety net […]

The head of Barclays investment banking service, Bob Diamond, earned £22m in salary, shares and performance bonuses last year and became the highest earner in the companies that make up the FTSE 100.
Barclays defended the decision, saying that the division had been exceptionally successful, but many UK current accounts holders with the bank were not […]

There is a strong possibility that all mobile phone users could benefit from cheaper calls after Ofcom, the regulator, told mobile firms to cut their connection charges, representing a substantial saving and investment opportunity for consumers.
After a review, Ofcom has announced limits on the amount mobile phone companies can charge other operators for connecting calls on their […]

A friend of mine recently asked me for advice on savings accounts and which product would be the “best” one for her to make an initial deposit of £2,000.
I’m not a financial adviser and this is one of those “how long is a piece of string?”-type queries that usually beg more questions than answers. What I […]