The Future Of Cash Machines
This article raises a few questions about cash machines and how they will look in the future.
I don’t have a problem with the machines themselves, but increasingly over the last few years, I’ve had problems with the placement of a few machines, due to being unable to read them in the sun. And it’s not just cash machines, as this post shows.
I also have problems with some touch-screen technology.
And of course, if they insists on a smart phone in some way, they can forget it!
As they can, if I get charged to take out my money!
I think we’ll see the standard design last a few more years yet!
What Do You Get When You Cross Zopa With Wonga?
At a first glance Zopa and Wonga are at the two ends of the financial spectrum, when it comes to borrowing and lending money.
Zopa, Funding Circle and Ratesetter, and probably a few other peer-to-peer lenders in the UK and around the rest of the world, take in money from those who want a bit more interest on their savings and lend it out to those who after a series of rigorous checks, look like they might be able to repay it.
I have seen figures which show that peer-to-peer lending grew by 300% in the last year and has now lent over half a billion pounds. So they must be doing something right! On a personal note, although my return has dropped a bit in the last year, I still get nearly five percent on my money invested in Zopa before tax, after taking into account all charges and bad debts.
Wonga and the other payday lenders probably lend a lot of their money to people who’d never qualify for a loan from Zopa and their peers. The interest rates are a lot higher and the terms are generally not as favourable as those offered by Zopa.
In some ways what unites Wonga and Zopa is their efficient systems, backed by state-of-the-art computing. Robert Peston talked about Wonga’s systems in this article.
eMoneyUnion is a new peer-to-peer lender, which could be thought as a company, that takes the best practice of Zopa and Wonga and combines them to create a company that can lend to those who wouldn’t get a Zopa loan, but also gives a good return to its investors. This article is about the launch of the company.
So it would appear that eMoneyUnion could be the cross between Zopa and Wonga!
Let’s hope it all works out well. I shall be investing.
Is It Time To Leave Lloyds TSB?
If I was a Lloyds TSB customer, who was being summarily moved to another bank, like the Co-operative Bank or hived off into a subsidiary that was being privatised or perhaps sold to a sovereign wealth fund, I would not be pleased. In fact, given the shenanigans at the bank in this area, over the last couple of years, I would have been long gone.
This disregard of customer wishes is akin to buying a new Sony television and then when it is working well, getting a letter to say, that your new television is being swapped for a Samsung, for no good reason.
It is a matter of my human rights, that I choose where I keep my money and it has nothing to do with the government.
I don’t think that I’m the only person, who thinks like this and it will be interesting to see how many customers Lloyds TSB lose.
Today there is a story on the BBC web site, about how the banks are lining up to take part in the sale of the government’s stake in Lloyds TSB. This will only make matters worse and I suspect, a once-great British institution, will end up in the hands of foreigners.
I certainly will have nothing to do with the Lloyds TSB sale and if it was decided that every UK citizen, should get a few free shares, I’d just say thank you very much, cash them in as soon as I could and then spend the money on something more worthwhile.
Zopa Starts Loans To Sole Traders
Zopa is now moving into new territory by announcing business loans to sole traders. The details are here. Here’s Zopa’s reasoning as reported by the article.
We’ve chosen to start our business loans with sole traders for two reasons:
1. We saw that there were few opportunities for smart sole traders, with a good credit and trading history, to access good-value loans.
2. Sole traders are often looking for loans of a similar size and time period as our personal loan borrowers so offering these loans doesn’t require big changes for our savers to the way they choose to lend
So will it make any difference to the risk of investing in Zopa?
I don’t think it will make much difference at all, especially as I suspect the profile of the sole traders they lend to, won’t be far removed from a typical Zopa personal borrower.
The only problem, I can see is that to support this new area of lending the Government is injecting millions into Zopa. What effect will this have on the rates lenders like myself get, I do not know or wish to predict!
A Take On Bankers Worth Reading
This blog post on bankers is worth reading. Two of my least-favourite politicians get the treatment with no holds barred.
Read it! If I paraphrased it, I’d reduce the quality of the criticism.
Theft At Cash Machines On The Rise
This story says that thefts at cash machines are on the rise. I’ve never been targeted and I usually make sure I get my money out at machines I know well and often in the morning, as prejudice says that criminals always lie in bed as they drunk too much last night. I also often use a machine inside a branch of Nationwide, because there are comfortable seats there to sit down, whilst I sort it all out. This paragraph from the article is telling and shows how to use a stolen card to get cash.
The perpetrators used the card to lay £400 in bets at Ladbrokes and withdrew £240 in cash.
As someone, who once held a licence for a betting shop, I know the fiddles that go on in these places.
Incidentally, a fraud expect told me, that he’d analysed card thefts and subsequent withdrawals. He felt that if customers used an easy pin like 1234, it was more likely to be discovered. My pin jumps about all over the place, so I hope if someone watches they can’t get it.
I have said before in this post, that I wish my bank statement gave me more information about my withdrawals, with perhaps the location of the cash machine. I think, if this was done, it would alert customers, that perhaps their card had been skimmed.
Co-Operative Bank Ditches Business Lending
This story on the BBC web site, says a lot about the state of the Co-Operative Bank. Here’s the first bit.
Co-operative Bank has stopped offering new business loans amid concerns over its capital position.
The bank is continuing to provide lending to existing customers, but has frozen lending to new corporate customers.
I don’t bank there, but if I did, I’d be moving my account for safety reasons tomorrow. If not today!
Bankers Don’t Get It Do They!
My bank, Nationwide, has just made me an offer. If I pay them ten pounds a month, I get a special account, which gives me the following benefits.
- Free worldwide travel insurance for you and your family, including winter sports, golf, wedding and business cover
- Free Worldwide mobile phone insurance
- Free UK & European breakdown cover
- 3% AER (2.96% gross p.a.) variable in-credit interest on balances up to £2,500
Is this a joke?
They say it’s designed to make my life simple.
Let’s take each point.
Starting with the travel insurance.
I don’t have any family, who are dependent on me. I don’t do winter sports or golf. I don’t have any plans to get married and my business, if I have anything is enjoying myself.
I suppose I do need some form of travel insurance, but at the moment, I’ve no plans to go outside of an area, where I get decent healthcare on my EHIC.
The mobile phone insurance is irrelevant, as I use a £10 phone for my communications. If I lost it, I’d just buy another in the nearest O2 shop for a tenner.
Is the third point about breakdown insurance serious? I don’t have a car.
But I reserve my highest condemnation for the derisory interest rate on savings. I’m getting a safeguarded five percent on over a hundred thousand pounds with Zopa. So it’s not government guaranteed, but the company is run by people with intelligence and not a wunch of bankers.
There is no mention of the features I would like.
- Text messages every time, a transaction over a particular amount happens on a credit card or bank account.
- Annotated statements, that allow me to comment on transactions. Taken to its logical conclusion, you could even add a cost code, which could then be used by software to create a simple set of accounts.
- Full tracing on cashpoints, I’ve used. I’ve noticed that the records of those I used in Switzerland are much more detailed than the one I used yesterday in Islington.
- Customisation of my bank account, so that I set levels for alerts, withdrawals etc.
There is an opportunity out there and the first bank to go that way, gets my business.
In this article, the banks are accused of being less than co-operative with the peer-to-peer lender; Funding Circle.
Who’d have thought that those respectable banks, would do something like that?
The Anti-Fraud Advantage Of Sites Like Zopa
If you wanted to get money out of someone else’s bank account, all you need to do is login to their computer and have the equipment necessary to perform a transfer.
My bank account is probably as secure as any other, but I never keep my card reader and the card together. Admittedly, all card readers for Nationwide are the same, but my passwords are only written in my brain.
But if you did manage to login, you could perform a transfer to your bank account, but it would probably require me to give in to threats to release the passwords.
But with a site like Zopa or Ratesetter and probably many others, where the only transfer out of the account can be to the bank account, where the money came from in the first place, you’d have quite a problem getting round the security measures. The very fact, that they exist, would probably mean you’d try to crack a more mainstream system, like an account with one of the major banks.
It illustrates how often a simple absolute rule, is often a much more secure method of protection, than something based on complicated hardware and tortuous passwords.
The Anonymous Widower 