The Department Of Work And Pensions Doesn’t Believe In Speed
I was sixty-five on the sixteenth of August and still haven’t had a sniff of a pension, despite several phone calls and a few letters.
I’m not someone who is in desperate need of the money, but surely if I was, it would be causing me great difficulties.
After all, it’s not if my pension age sneaked up on them and they’ve had my details since I started getting winter fuel payments a couple of years ago.
It’s a complete disgrace!
Ten EU Nations Vote For Financial Transaction Tax
The FTT is one of those ideas, that might well come into being in the next few years. But if it does come into being it has to be universal with every country charging the tax, otherwise financial transaction will move to the areas of lowest tax.
So the decision of ten EU countries to introduce such a tax is in my view not the best idea. Read about it here on the BBC. I doubt if this proposal will work very well as two of the shrewdest countries using the Euro; Ireland and The Netherlands are not joining. Obviously, we aren’t as why should we disadvantage the City of London with respect to New York, Dubai and Tokyo?
One question that I have about the limited EU proposals is what do you get charged if your bank is head-quartered in a country, that levies an FTT. I don’t bank with a bank that is, but say if I banked with Santander, I’d be moving my account tomorrow.
On a personal note, an FTT on all transactions might possibly harm peer-to-peer lenders like Zopa, so in fact it might be a block to innovative financial developments in countries within the net of the tax.
I give a non-worldwide FTT a couple of years at most, as it will disadvantage companies in countries within the tax.
If the EU wanted to raise more tax, they could clamp down on illegal cash transfers between countries in the Euro. How do these fall within an FTT? Many houses, too in places like France are sold in part by bank transfer and by cash to avoid the capital gains tax.
Nationwide Looks At The 316 RBS Branches
According to this article in the Guardian, Nationwide is looking at the 316 RBS branches that Santander didn’t want.
I can’t see why as other articles in the news have said that Nationwide has been getting a lot of customers in recent weeks.
I bank with Nationwide and in the last two years, I’ve only been inside a branch twice, except to draw money out from a cashpoint there and have a sit down on a comfortable seat, whilst I put it away.
So if they put this proposal to a vote of shareholders, I would say no, as all it would mean would be that my account costs would rise.
The Daily Telegraph Says Start Sharing
This article in the Daily Telegraph should be read by everyone.
It outlines various Internet-based sharing schemes for cars, money and even land.
It says this about Zopa and its ilk.
When your budget is tight, lending money to strangers might seem crazy, but a rising number of savers and borrowers are going online to cut out the high street banks.
Better still, while interest rates stand at a historic low, DIY bankers who advance loans online at “peer-to-peer” lending websites such asZopa.co.uk can earn an average return of 5.4pc a year.
We live in interesting times.
How Good Are The Companies You Deal with?
I found this on a financial forum, but it applies in so many fields. The guy is talking about where he invests his hard-earned money.
One criteria for me was to Google Maps the address of each company (a crazy idea maybe but try it). put the yellow man on and walk past the firm
Is it a big corporate office or is it above a pizza take away (as one is).
Whilst offices might not mean a lot (Equitable Life,Alba,Northern Rock,Icelandic banks etc)
it is one yardstickI aren’t giving my money to a firm that is not filthy rich.
I’ve tried it with a few people I deal with in various areas. In one case the results surprised me.
Getting A Loan Of £5,000 Or Less
I don’t need to borrow money, but I do have a trap setup to make sure that I get information about Zopa and the other peer-to-peer lenders, as obviously I want to put my money in the best places.
I found this article, entitled.
Money Insider: Want a loan of £5,000 or less? Shop around,
In yesterday’s Independent. The article has some interesting things to say about borrowing money and this in particular about Zopa and Ratesetter, two of the peer-to-peer lenders.
Zopa, the first peer-to-peer lender in the UK, is now in its eighth year and RateSetter, one of the more recent lenders in the peer-to-peer market, both offer some of the best value deals at 9.5 per cent APR and 9.7 per cent APR respectively for a £3,000 loan over three years. Just because you’re not familiar with the names doesn’t mean you should discount them — the peer-to-peer market has quickly established itself as a credible alternative to the big banks — and the interest rates are much better than you’ll find on the high street. Zopa has already lent more than £230m and RateSetter has advanced more than £36m to personal customers.
It also highlights another prudent way to borrow from MBNA.
Another option is the Rate for Life card from MBNA. Although not strictly a personal loan, there’s nothing to stop you using this long-term fixed-rate credit card in the same way you would as a loan. If you transfer your balance to the card and set up a monthly standing order for your current account, it works exactly the same as a personal loan.
All of this adds up to the fact, that the banks are under pressure to maintain their traditional place in the financial field. The second paragraph I’ve highlighted illustrates this, in that conventional wisdom says that borrowing on a credit card is an expensive business and should avoided at all costs. If I’d heard this in the pub and not read it in a respected newspaper, I wouldn’t have believed it.
But as in all things these days, the rule of innovation applies; innovate or die. The banks do little of the former and are flirting with the latter.
Zopa’s Bad Debts
I watch the bad debts I accumulate on Zopa very carefully.
At the end of 2011, I had 11 bad contracts, who owed me a total of 408.24 on a sum invested of about £40,000. That’s just under one percent.
Not quite a year later, I have 17 bad contracts, owing £428.39. But my book has grown to just under £90,000. That’s now less than half of one percent.
I do suspect this reduction is due to Zopa’s checking of clients getting better as the year’s roll on. In fact, of the 17 contracts in default, 3 date from 2008, 8 from 2009, 6 from 2010 and none from the last two years.
But also two of my older bad debts have been paid off. Does this mean that Zopa has a good collection system or do people want to protect their credit ratings? It could be a bit of both. Sadly someone could have died and probate has come through.
Would You Buy A Bank Branch?
You’re a very rich man and you are the CEO of a bank that you feel is reputable, so would you buy one bank branch let alone 316 as Santander tried to do from RBS, as is reported here?
I think the answer is no. Three hundred and sixteen times no!
They would have been transferring 1,800,000 customers to Santander. I used to have my account at the Woolwich Building Society and when it was taken over by Barclays, I didn’t feel that I wanted to bank there, so I moved to Nationwide, where I bank on-line.
So how many of these nearly two million accounts will move somewhere else, like one of the new banks being started by such as Tesco or Marks and Spencer?
I’m not affected, but I choose which bank I’m with! Not some faceless man in Spain!
I wonder also how many people adhere to one of my friend David’s rules of banking, which is to bank with a bank headquartered in the UK and preferably England.
I think too, that five thousand staff will be transferred with the branches and the accounts too. How many of the good ones will jump ship and join someone else.
But these days with more and more people banking sans branch, like I do, surely the best thing to do would be to convert these 316 branches into places of hospitality?
They could perhaps be converted into burlesque bars , offering good food and drink, with a couple of cash machines to emphasise their heritage. It would certainly do wonders for the image of bankers. They wouldn’t even have to change the signage, if they called them Royal Burlesque Shows.
Would You Disclose Your Name On Zopa?
Or any other financial site, that gave loans?
Zopa allows me to see who I have lent money to, their payment history and a few other details. Normally, the person is only identified by a code name. So you could lend to someone called MickeyMouse or Graham171.
In two cases though, I’ve been able to identify the borrower. One was actually someone, that I knew and the other is a reputable professional living and working in London.
Both incidentally, have had immaculate payment records, so they have nothing to hide.
But I do find it strange that someone would join a financial site and make it possible to identify them.
NatWorst Opens The Door To The Fraudsters
Natwest have brought in a system called Get Cash based on a mobile phone app. But according to this on the BBC’s web site, it’s all started to backfire.
It looks to me that the Get Cash app is just too easy a target for fraudsters and it appears to me as a humble programmer and system designer, that they used programmers and designers, who didn’t understand the criminal mind.
If my bank offers me a mobile phone app to do my banking or use a credit card, the answer is no, no a thousand times no!
Incidentally, the computer that does my banking, never leaves my house and sits behind a door with a powerful lock on it.
I usually only draw out cash from a small number of cash machines fairly close to my house or at the Angel.
The Anonymous Widower 