Bank Transfer Problems
Last week, I wanted to transfer sixty thousand from the sale of my house in Suffolk, from my bank account to a respected stockbrokers, who were going to invest the money for me in a safe investment until I need it to perhaps do my new house up.
I thought it would be best to transfer ten grand to see that the system worked. It didn’t, so it was returned! Apparently, my bank tried to send it through Faster Payments and the bank at the other end couldn’t accept that sum immediately and returned it. Speaking to my stockbroker, he said this happened a lot. Is this down to money laundering regulations, which question all large transfers?
It turned out the maximum sum, that I could transfer must be less than ten thousand.
So I transferred £9921.00, by following my rules, as it was the twenty-first when I did it. It went through without trouble.
Then I transferred £9921.01, £9921.02, £9921.03, £9921.04, £9921.05 and £473.85, to complete the sixty thousand.
What a farce!
What got me, when I tried to transfer the £60,000 in the first place, was that my on-line banking site, stopped me, but didn’t tell me how I was to do it. I suppose, that I had to phone up or go into a branch. But then I bank on-line!
I suppose they want me to keep the money in my Current Account or so-called Saving Account, which pays a similar interest to a mattress!
No wonder everybody gets annoyed with bankers! But in this case, I assume that it’s the money laundering regulations, which are very easy to circumvent if you’re a drug dealer, but just make it difficult for the rest of us!
London Uses The Train Model For 600 New Buses for London
London has just ordered 600 New Buses for London from Wrightbus, according to this article on the BBC website.
Boris’s political opponents say he is wrong, but they would anyway, wouldn’t they?
On the other hand, what Transport for London (TfL) are using is exactly the same purchase model, as that used for trains in this country.
The trains are ordered by the Department of Transport, owned by leasing companies or ROSCOs and then hired by the train companies like Virgin. In many cases, the maintenance is arranged by the manufacturer or ROSCO and they guarantee to provide so many trains each day.
When applied to London’s buses, this must give similar advantages.
- Although, TfL are buying 600 buses, I suspect that this package includes maintenance and guarantees a specific number of operational buses. In fact, on the 38 route, there are nine in service, but usually one is kept as a spare, in case of failure.
- Are TfL selling the leases on to a third party? How many of those, who are against the deal, have never bought something on hire purchase or a lease?
- The buses can be used, where and when they are needed. Most routes need about 20-30 buses, so batches of the New Buses can be moved around, according to need. For instance, the passenger pattern may be very different according to the seasons, so buses might run on one route in summer and another in the winter.
- These buses will change as time goes on and owning them outright, gives TfL the opportunity to update the older ones to the new specification.
- I think too, that the single ownership, should mean that the buses will have a longer service lifetime, just like the old Routemasters and the Inter City 125 trains.
- It will also give TfL time to do a full analysis of bus design, operation patterns and costs.
So all things being well, I think this could be a good decision, that saves money in the long term.
Bank Transfer Traceability
One thing that annoys me about on-line banking, is that when you pay a bill like a credit card, you often can’t trace it at both ends, as often the reference doesn’t appear for some days. So now, I usually pay them making sure the last two digits are the day of the month. That way it becomes obvious, if the transfer has been made and what it was.
It really all comes down to the fact that banks do not provide full information on their statements. And when they’ve not got it, they don’t even give you a clue!
I would be ashamed if I’d designed such a poor system.
Did The Government Dither Over Northern Rock?
Sir Nicholas Macpherson was the senior civil servant in the Treasury, when Northern Rock ran into difficulties. He has just appeared before the Treasury Select Committee and there is a report here. This is the first paragraph.
The Treasury’s most senior civil servant has told MPs the government should have been quicker to nationalise Northern Rock following its collapse.
It doesn’t appear to me, that the government appeared to act quickly at all.
Perhaps, Gordon Brown was just being too prudent!
On the other hand, I’ve done financial modelling with loan companies and know that if you decide to run them down collecting all the payments aggressively, you can often retrieve a bad situation.
So perhaps, they were hoping Northern Rock would all come good! It didn’t!
Remember though, the bank did employ a lot of people in Labour’s heartland. So liquidation would have been a bad option for NuLabor.
Zopa Simplifies The Markets
Zopa has today announced that instead of having five markets; A*, A, B, C and Youth, this will soon be simplified to just three, with C and Y being discarded.
Effectively this will bring it in line with what I do, as I don’t invest in the Youth market and although I’ve recently added the C market to my offer, I haven’t lent anything there yet. All market rates of late have been very stable, so my control engineering theory says hat everything should be in balance.
I think they are right to do this.
- They would now be appearing to be making a much better offer to younger borrowers with a good credit rating.
- The simplified structure makes it easier to decide your lending strategy.
- It also makes it less important to get it right on the optimum.
We shall see if they are right and business and returns improve.
Is It Worth Investing In Zopa’s C Market?
Zopa’s C market pays better than the ones that I invest in now. At present, I get 6.3% in A*, 6.7% in A and 7.6 in B. Switching on C has given me 8.9% in that market.
I’m going to switch it on for a month or so, and see if my bad debt gets worse. I didn’t always have the B market switched on and so far, I haven’t had a write-off in that market. I enabled it on the 17th December 2010.
The aim is to see if the extra interest received is worth the extra defaults.
Suppose I had £1,000 invested in the C market, which could be paying upwards of 1.3% better than B. This would give me an extra thirteen pounds a year.
After about 12 hours, I’ve got one contract pending in the C market.
Current Account Fraud Rises
The Independent is reporting that current account fraud is rising.
I suppose this will only afect the man on the Dalston Omnibus, if the banks don’t make sure they check applications correctly.
Bad News From Zopa
I had some bad news today, when I was informed that Zopa don’t think one of my lenders will pay me any more money.
I lent him £20 in May 2009 at 8.9% and I’ve now lost £1.48 on the deal.
I’ll just buy one less coffee today, than I would have done!
Zopa Gets Very Stable
I’ve said before that Zopa could be a classic stable system.
Over the last three weeks, the rates I’m charging to lend out money on Zopa have hardly changed. I set them just under the top limit of the Zone Of Possible Agreement, that gives Zopa its name. The rate for the B, A and A* markets have been 7.6, 6.7 and 6.3 respectively for the last ten days now, which isn’t a bad rate.
Not bad that is, before tax and for effectively three years!
My rate this year so far is 4.58%. It’s been distorted a bit as I’m loading money into Zopa like crazy.
How Long Does It Take To Lend Out £10,000 On Zopa?
£10,000 was transferred into my Zopa account on the 23rd of August. It did take a couple of days or so to actually arrive after leaving my bank account, but then that is the bank transfer system.
Surely in this day and age, it can be an instant event!
My old mate, David, once said that banks make up to a third of their money on overnight lending. So my £10,000 for two days lent out at only three per cent, whilst in the care of the banks would make them about £1.64. Not much, you may think, but it’s pure profit and how much money is there in the system? I bet they lend it at a higher rate than three per cent too.
After the £10,000 arrived in my Zopa account on the 22nd, on the 23rd, I had £11,960.43 either offered for lending or being processed.
A week later and that figure is down to £9060.43. So effectively £2,900 has now been lent out. £9,300 in total is being processed, but some of that comes from money that has been reinvested.
So it would appear that Zopa has a processing limit.
The Anonymous Widower 