February 2015 ~ InulPoker Climbing

Friday, February 27, 2015

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Damn all the cuts, but credit where it's due

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:00 GMT, 21 February 2015 | Updated: 15:01 GMT, 22 February 2015

Bad news to report, I am afraid to say, for those looking to earn more than a meagre return on their hard-earned savings.

Although the great and good that form the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee have decided once again to keep Bank Base Rate at 0.5 per cent, interest rate stability is not on the agenda of those who run our banks and building societies (I hesitate to refer to them as the great and good). It’s all about cuts.

Nationwide Building Society is the latest deposit taker to trim savings rates to the bone. It has withdrawn a series of variable and fixed rate savings products, replacing them with inferior new versions.

Bad news: Nationwide Building Society is the latest deposit taker to trim savings rates

Cuts of up to 0.3 percentage points have been made.

It’s not the only savings sinner. According to Anna Bowes, of rate scrutineer Savings Champion, Britannia, owned by The Co-operative, and Leeds Building Society have also made some ‘horrible’ cuts.

Bowes says savers in 183 accounts have suffered cuts this month alone, bringing the total number of accounts in rate freefall this year to a tad over 300.

Horrible news for savers, for which there are no easy solutions other than to shop around and take advantage of the tax freedom provided by Individual Savings Accounts (Isas).

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In a week when the fine, upstanding people of St Agnes in Cornwall saw their one and only bank branch shut for good (damn you, Barclays), it only seems apt to praise those few banks – and their employees – that continue to demonstrate that quality customer service is not altogether dead.

After all, bank bashing is easy but bank loving is altogether more difficult given there is currently so little to love in the personal banking world.

First bit of ‘love’ goes the way of Metro Bank, a newish challenger institution that – unusually for a bank – believes a successful business can only be built on customer service par excellence. People matter. It is also atypical in that it is opening new branches rather than shutting them, as is the way of Barclays (damn you).

Last week, I decided to transfer online a little bit of money into my Metro current account. But having not used it for months, I couldn’t for the life of me remember the password and security number.

Rather than freeze me out of my account for days while I was issued with new security details, a kindly gentleman in Metro’s Sutton branch helped me unfreeze it within minutes.

So thrilled to be spoken to courteously, and so impressed with the quality of his antifreeze, I decided on the spot to open an instant access savings account. I will wash over the fact that it’s only paying peanuts (0.75 per cent gross interest).

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Good news: Metro Bank's 'magic' money machines are free

A day later I marched into Metro Bank’s Kensington High Street branch in West London to deposit a huge bag of loose coins into my new savings account paying peanuts. Rather than be marshalled off the premises for having the temerity to bring change into the branch (as is the way of some banks), I was directed to its ‘magic’ money machine.

Pouring the coinage into its grumbling bowels, I was rewarded with a receipt for £116, plus an odd assortment of rejected coins from countries I have never visited in my life but which look remarkably like British coinage (damn those who gave them to me).

If it weren’t for my very generous overdraft, I’d jump banking ship lock, stock and barrel What I liked about this machine was that it was free – similar machines in retailers such as Tesco take a cut of the coinage as a processing fee. Other banks would be wise to install similar machines in their shrinking branch networks.

Also, I actually felt welcome in the branch. Staff were smiling and if it wasn’t for the fact that my existing bank provides me with a generous overdraft facility I can ill-afford to lose, I would have been tempted to jump banking ship lock, stock and barrel.

Second bit of love goes to Yorkshire Building Society, another financial institution that believes in maintaining a vibrant branch network and personal service. Last week, it marked the refurbishment of its Norwich & Peterborough branch in Cathedral Square, Peterborough by inviting 95-year-old RAF war veteran Charles White to cut the ribbon. Like Barnsley and Chelsea, N&P is a former building society now owned by Yorkshire.

Charles, who served in Egypt during the Second World War, has been a customer of N&P for 70 years and says that along the way he has made many friends at the branch. Call me old-fashioned but given a choice between a bank offering me customer-centric personal banking and one keen to get me out of the branch and using its latest mobile banking app, I’d go customer-centric all day, every day.

DIY investing

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Investment trusts have served us well

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:11 GMT, 31 January 2015 | Updated: 15:47 GMT, 1 February 2015

Investment trusts have been generating wealth on behalf of private investors for nearly 200 years. Long may it continue. Despite the occasional unpleasant hiccup, most notably the awful split capital misselling scandal of the late 1990s, these funds have served investors extremely well.

Indeed, it is testimony to their continued attractiveness that many have been around a long, long time – and will be long after I am pushing up daisies in some rundown Hertfordshire cemetery.

Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust, the first collective investment scheme ever, launched in 1868 (not just here but worldwide), is still chugging along – and doing very nicely.

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Apart from their robustness and income-friendly set up, what I like about investment trusts is that most levy competitive annual management charges, says Jeff Prestridge

Over the past five years, it has comfortably outperformed the FTSE All-Share Index – the litmus test for any trust or investment fund looking to attract money from investors like me and you (I’m not an investor).

Its longevity is commendable but a bigger feather in its cap is that it has 44 years of continued dividend growth. I am not aware of any UK-listed company outside the investment trust sector that can match such a record.

Other trusts with more than 100 years of investment management under their belts – and with longer dividend growth records than F&C – include Alliance, Bankers and City of London.

Apart from their robustness and income-friendly set up, what I like about investment trusts is that most levy competitive annual management charges – sometimes a third of those applied by rival investment funds (unit trusts or open-ended investment companies).

It means less of your money is eaten away by charges – crucial in a low-interest environment where investment returns are unpredictable.

Some, despite their long history, are also prepared to adapt if things are not quite working out – either by changing investment manager (company, not individual) or the trust’s focus. They can do this because unlike an investment fund they are overseen by independent boards who have the right to demand change.

One such trust in the process of significant upheaval is 188-year-old British Assets, run coincidentally by the same investment group that manages Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust – Bank of Montreal owned F&C. Its board has decided that British Assets needs freshening up – it has underperformed the FTSE All-Share over the past five years.

So F&C is being replaced at the investment helm by rival BlackRock. Also, subject to shareholder approval later this month (this is a formality, I am told), the trust will also change tack, investing in a range of assets rather than relying heavily on UK equities. The name will change to BlackRock Income Strategies.

The idea is to grow the dividend each year in line with the Consumer Prices Index which will not be that taxing given it is running at 0.5 per cent. The annual total return target – income plus capital – is a conservative CPI plus 4 percentage points.

Lynn Ruddick, chairwoman, says the revamp will give the trust more of a unique selling point.

It will also make it attractive to those looking to keep their pension funds invested through retirement rather than annuitise, without taking unnecessary risk. Like all trusts, British Assets can be held in a self-invested personal pension.

The proof will be in the pudding but the overhaul is a bold move that demonstrates why investment trusts should form a part of your retirement portfolio.

Reassuringly, they are longstanding and prepared to change with the times.

Sites for sore eyes

Good news time (I bet you never thought you’d see me write that). I am pleased – no, delighted – to report that copycat websites taxreturnportal and taxreturnsubmission are no more.

Early last week, in response to our investigative article exposing the £500 fees they were charging for a tax return filing service free via the official HM Revenue &Customs website, they were taken down ahead of yesterday’s deadline for self-assessment.

By the way, if you haven’t now submitted your tax return, I am sorry to inform you that a £100 fine is coming your way from those nasty people at Revenue &Customs.

Disingenuously, Connor Saunders, speaking on behalf of the two websites, told The Mail on Sunday last week that they would be ‘revamped to make it even clearer what the service is and the associated fees’.

He also argued that taxreturnportal and taxreturnsubmission were not copycat websites – which is a bit like saying a rattlesnake does not bite. I doubt the websites will reappear. As I said, good news time.

DIY investing

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Eureka! I have solved the loan crisis with MMR=M³

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 21:35 GMT, 29 November 2014 | Updated: 08:48 GMT, 1 December 2014

MMR=M³. For non-mortgage geeks, this is not an equation I have stolen from one of my son’s engineering textbooks that he scatters around the house like confetti at a wedding.

Nor is it one of the many equations Alan Turing employed to break the Enigma Code – I certainly didn’t see it when I recently watched the splendid Benedict Cumberbatch portray Turing in The Imitation Game.

Rather, it is my view of why this country is losing its worldwide tag as the flag waver for a home-owning democracy – where young adults strive to own their own bricks and mortar and where, for most households, their home (be it an end of terrace or a four-bedroom new build) really is their castle.

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Strangling the market: Mortgage Market Review equals Mortgage Market Madness (M³)

I will keep you in suspense no longer. Ladies and gentlemen, Mortgage Market Review equals Mortgage Market Madness (M³).

Sadly, and wrongly, this ‘review’ is slowly strangling the life out of the housing market. It (the review) needs to be reviewed itself as a matter of urgency before the home loans market grinds to a halt.

Nobody surely – be they politicians or well-paid regulators – wants such an outcome. Not even the Labour Party, despite their spiteful mansion tax.

MMR was applied earlier this year by the great and good that preside over home loan regulations from their Financial Conduct Authority watchtower in Canary Wharf, London.

The thrust of the new rules was well intentioned – to ensure that banks and building societies lend responsibly, borrowers do not overextend themselves in an environment where interest rates can only go up, and house price bubbles become nothing more than a distant memory.

Yet good intentions do not always result in best outcomes. What has happened is that most mortgage providers – especially the bigger players that assess loan applications robotically rather than on an individual basis – are sticking rigidly to the new MMR rules.

The result is that getting a home loan is becoming more difficult than ever with lenders being extremely cautious over both whom to provide mortgage funds to and how much. Applicants’ expenditure patterns are being probed, sometimes too intrusively.

Challenging: Unless you are a perfect applicant, the chances of getting the mortgage you want are slim

Unless you are a perfect applicant, the chances of getting the mortgage you want are slim. ‘Perfect’ means being armed with a big deposit or a large amount of equity in your existing home.

It also means being in secure employment (few people working in the private sector are ‘secure’) and possessing a frugal rather than bohemian attitude to life (more Poundland than Waitrose).

According to David Hollingworth of mortgage broker London & Country, many lenders have ‘overreacted’ in their interpretation of MMR, not wanting to stand out from the crowd for fear of ‘having their collar felt’. So, if in doubt, rejection rather than acceptance of an application is the order of the day.

A few days ago, a report from the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association painted a dire picture of the mortgage market post-MMR. It said many lenders no longer provide loans to borrowers if the mortgage term would stretch beyond their expected retirement age.

Given the fact that most mortgage applicants in their 40s and 50s have no idea when they are going to retire – especially with the State Pension age constantly being pushed back and many people now working well beyond normal retirement age – it seems wrong for lenders to be behaving in such draconian fashion.

‘To avoid a situation where regulation brings about the extinction of mortgage terms that stretch into retirement, we need clarity and confirmation about where the boundaries of responsible lending truly lie,’ said Peter Williams, IMLA’s executive director.

What he was saying in a roundabout way was: MMR=M³.

Williams also said MMR had seriously curtailed the willingness among big lenders to provide home loans to the self-employed, especially if applicants are unable to provide at least either two years of accounts or self-assessment tax returns (proving income).

It is no coincidence that post- MMR, mortgage lending has fallen off a cliff. In the past few days, the British Bankers’ Association said new mortgage approvals last month fell to a 17-month low.

And with new, attractive NS&I ‘pensioner bonds’ on the horizon, potentially denting savings inflows into banks and building societies, lenders will have less mortgage funds to parcel out.

One small grain of comfort is that the Financial Conduct Authority has promised to review MMR in the first half of next year. Let’s hope that it will recognise it needs to cut lenders – and wannabe borrowers – a little slack.

The sooner the better. After all, MMR=M³.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Two wrongs that must be made right

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:03 GMT, 27 December 2014 | Updated: 14:37 GMT, 28 December 2014

It is a fact of financial life that victims of wrongdoing – invariably hard-working, hard-saving citizens – do not always get the justice they deserve.

Over the life of the current Government, two groups of investors badly wronged by the financial services industry, and those who regulate it, have not received satisfactory justice.

They are investors in Equitable Life and Arch Cru, monstrous financial scandals of our time – indeed of any time. Speak to anyone who took out a savings plan with Equitable in the 1980s and 1990s and they will tell you they have been horribly let down.

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Financial shame: Equitable Life investors are still waiting for justice to prevail after financial mismanagement

They saved diligently throughout their working lives to ensure they were not a burden on the State and to enjoy a retirement free from financial worry.

But 14 years on from suffering catastrophic financial losses after Equitable nearly went to the wall as a result of mismanagement and regulatory failure, they are still waiting for justice to prevail.

Although the present Government, unlike the previous Labour administration, agreed in 2010 to pay £1.5 billion of redress, it has still left nearly a million policyholders feeling short changed. The compensation only covers a tickle over 20 per cent of the losses they incurred.

Such an obvious case of financial injustice explains why many Equitable victims, most now in their 80s and 90s, continue to campaign ferociously for the wrongdoing done to them to be addressed satisfactorily.

Only two months ago, the magnificent Honor Blackman, who starred as Pussy Galore in the 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger and is an Equitable victim herself, vented her spleen on the issue (not for the first time, I hasten to add). She told a gathering of policyholders – and a smattering of sympathetic MPs – inside Central Hall Westminster in London that she wanted the Government to settle its debt. 'My compensation glass is not 20 per cent full, it’s 80 per cent empty,' she said to rapturous applause.

Honor Blackman: High profile campaigner against Equitable Life, who she lost money with

She also argued, rather convincingly, that Equitable savers were being treated like second-class citizens, especially in light of the 100 per cent protection customers of bailed out banks received (quite rightly so) in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

This monumental financial injustice remains a blot on the financial landscape. It is to the Government's great discredit that it hasn't removed it.

The same can be said of Arch Cru. This scandal may not be on the same scale as Equitable but it has left investors out of pocket and begs serious questions about the competence of regulators – and the fairness of their actions.

Some 20,000 investors put money into Arch funds between 2006 and 2009, thinking they were getting exposure to a pool of low-risk ('cautious managed') assets. But behind Arch’s glossy literature lay an altogether different story. Investors' money was not being invested cautiously but into illiquid assets such as hedge funds, forestry, Greek shipping, private equity and wine (yes, I know, liquid in one sense, but illiquid as an asset).

So, when the financial crisis struck and people wanted to get their money out, they couldn’t. Finally, in spring 2009, the Arch funds were suspended. For more than five years, investors, aided by some sterling work by the all-party parliamentary group on Arch Cru, have battled to get back their money. Most, not all, have been more successful than their Equitable compatriots.

Big swathes of the remaining assets within the funds have been sold and the proceeds distributed to investors. Also, a majority of investors have taken their share of a (miserly) £54 million settlement agreed between the City regulator and those firms employed to ensure Arch was doing everything by the book (which it wasn’t).

A week before Christmas, Arch investors were further cheered by news that Arch Financial Products (former managers of the funds) and its chief executive had been ordered in the High Court to pay £22 million for their role in the debacle. This money, if it ever gets paid, will be handed back to investors.

Yet justice has not prevailed. Guy Opperman MP, chair of the all-party group, has worked tirelessly in helping victims of this 'terrible financial scandal'.

But his own calculations suggest that most investors are on course to get back only 54 per cent of their investments – maybe more if they sought redress from their adviser for poor advice.

That is not justice whichever way you analyse it. Some parties involved in the perpetration of this wrongdoing have got off lightly, most notably Capita whose job was to safeguard investors’ money.

In a just financial world, it should be Capita that is making good all outstanding losses. But such a world, sadly, does not exist.

Happy New Year.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: It's a no-brainer... Fix your mortgage rate right now - preferably for five years

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:10 GMT, 14 February 2015 | Updated: 11:29 GMT, 15 February 2015

Despite the best efforts of the City’s regulator to squeeze the pips out of the mortgage market with draconian lending rules, most homeowners or aspiring buyers have never had it so good.

Mortgage rates for many people looking to buy or change lender continue to break new lows.

It’s great financial news – and most welcome. But let’s not kid ourselves that this friendly mortgage market will last forever.

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Plan ahed: The friendly mortgage market will not last forever

Remember, there is a distinct possibility (perish the thought) that ‘Red’ Ed Miliband could wash up at No 10 sometime in early May, imperilling all the good work that has been done in the past five years to put the economy back on track.

And irrespective of whether Red Ed gets in or not, Europe could well go into an economic tailspin, triggered by unfolding events in Greece. So, it’s a no-brainer. If you can, fix your mortgage rate right now – preferably for five years.

The current good health of the mortgage market is also reflected in the latest repossession statistics.

According to the grandly titled Council of Mortgage Lenders – Tolkienesque, I would suggest – repossessions last year fell to their lowest level since before the financial crisis. They totalled 21,000, equivalent to one for every 600 mortgages in force – a fraction of the 75,500 homes seized in 1991 in the wake of a housing market crash.

These latest repossession figures prompted the council’s director general – Paul Smee, the council’s very own Saruman – to opine that they ‘should help to reassure borrowers that, if they do face payment difficulties, lenders will work with them to try to resolve their problems. Repossession is only ever a last resort.’

Yet I’m not sure everyone would agree with Mr Smee on this. Late last year, Yorkshire Building Society was hit with a £4million fine by the Financial Conduct Authority for failing to treat customers fairly when they got into mortgage payment difficulties.

And last week Lloyds Banking Group admitted to The Mail on Sunday it had suspended repossession proceedings across all its mortgage brands. This, it said, was in response to a High Court judgment made last year in Northern Ireland.

The judge determined that the way Lloyds-owned Bank of Scotland handled borrowers in arrears was ‘unconscionable’ and a form of ‘double-billing’. The double billing was a result of missed mortgage interest payments being rolled into the borrower’s outstanding loan, in turn triggering higher interest payments.

The judge said the bank’s practices created ‘a mist of incomprehension, confusion and self-contradiction’ during subsequent repossession proceedings in the courts. Although the bank at the time said it would appeal the judgment, it did not do so.

This has led to the current suspension of all repossession proceedings while it continues to ‘consider the issues raised in the judgment’.

A few days ago I met with a reader who has had the repossession of her Warwickshire property temporarily suspended. She says Bank of Scotland’s handling of her case has been insensitive – with letters ignored, its correspondence impersonal and requests to be moved off the bank’s expensive standard variable rate on to a more affordable deal summarily rejected.

Robotic is how she describes the bank. As for Mr Smee’s assertion that lenders are doing all they can to help struggling borrowers, she finds it risible. ‘I would laugh if I could stop crying.’

Let’s hope Lloyds’ current review results in an end to the robotic and much more of the sympathetic. As Mr Smee says, repossession really should be a last resort.

DIY investing

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: insurance companies dumping poor annuities on public

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 21:01 GMT, 20 September 2014 | Updated: 11:53 GMT, 21 September 2014

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Waking up with a sore head: Anyone tempted to act upon Aviva's mailshot should be informed that there are better value annuity providers out there

With a new liberal pensions regime edging ever closer, giving people greater control over how they access their pension pot, it seems some insurance companies are trying ever harder to dump poor-value annuities on an unsuspecting public before they become unsaleable.

Last week, I received a mailing from the mighty Aviva – mighty big into annuities – asking whether I wanted to be dumped on sooner rather than later. For the record the answer is no thank you, I’m still in gainful full-time employment as far as I know.

A pension annuity, I was told, would guarantee me an income for life (I can’t argue with that) from a brand the public can trust (sorry, no financial services company can ever be trusted).

Furthermore, I was informed that I could choose from several options – annuities that pay a level income, increase by a fixed amount each year or rise in line with inflation.

All fine and dandy. But it was what the mailshot omitted that I found most shocking. For a start, it failed to mention that a key option I should consider is whether to provide financial protection for a spouse, either through the purchase of a guaranteed income period or a reduced widow’s pension kicking in after my demise.

But worse than that, there was no mention whatsoever of the most important annuity option of all – whether, because of ill health or a history of drinking and smoking, I might be eligible for an enhanced annuity. (I will be).

Such annuities can pay out an income up to 40 per cent higher than conventional annuities and experts believe 60 per cent of all those retiring could be eligible. What makes this omission more baffling – as well as reprehensible – is that Aviva sells enhanced annuities.

Two final points on this shoddy little mailshot. First, anyone tempted to act upon it should be informed that there are better value annuity providers out there.

For example, pension experts at Hargreaves Lansdown say that someone wishing to turn a pension fund of £50,000 into a lifetime income with the security of a five- year guarantee – and a 50 per cent spouse’s pension – would get £2,714 a year from Hodge Lifetime or £2,665 from Canada Life. Aviva would only pay £2,587.

OK, the difference is not huge – and Aviva could argue with justification it is a better-known brand. But bearing in mind 65-year-olds can now expect to live for a further 20 years, the incremental income from choosing a Hodge or Canada annuity will mount up.

Second, the eagerness of some insurers to sell you an annuity ahead of the new pensions regime – starting in early April next year – has nothing to do with securing your future retirement plans, which is what Aviva told me.

It has everything to do with bolstering their profits before sales of annuities become marginalised in a new regime where retirees, not insurers, will pull all the retirement strings.

Maybe my nerve-jangling ride aboard a Boris Bike in unfriendly London traffic distracted me, but last Wednesday I walked out of my local Costa Coffee shop – huffing and puffing – unaware that I had just been in the presence of greatness.

None other than Prime Minister David Cameron had stepped in as I waddled out armed with a steaming Americano and still fuming over the Porsche Cayenne that had tried to make me meet my maker earlier than I intended.

Despite the unusual presence of a number of burly individuals on Kensington Church Street, only the kindly Big Issue seller alerted me to the fact that I had missed the opportunity to shake the Prime Minister’s hand and wish him all the best in the Scottish Independence vote.

On reflection, I wish I had stormed back into the shop and asked him to get his lieutenant George Osborne to start addressing two key personal finance issues currently bugging many of The Mail on Sunday’s fine readers. They are exorbitant stamp duty costs on home purchases and the unfairness of inheritance tax.

Instead, I say in print today – ahead of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham and the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement – what I should have said at Costa Coffee.

One: reform stamp duty by raising the threshold at which the tax kicks in – and end the unfair ‘slab’ system which means a property costing £250,000 results in one per cent stamp duty while a home worth £1 more triggers a three per cent tax charge.

Two: raise the current inheritance tax threshold to £1?million as Osborne promised he would seven years ago.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Archbishop of Canterbury's finance task force boss must try harder

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:06 GMT, 15 November 2014 | Updated: 08:56 GMT, 17 November 2014

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New direction: Sir Hector Sants is former boss of disbanded City regulator the Financial Services Authority

I don't think I will ever sing the praises – in this lifetime or the next – of Sir Hector Sants, former boss of disbanded City regulator the Financial Services Authority.

After all, it was Sants who was at the helm of the discredited – and very sleepy – regulator while mayhem was taking place across the banking industry, culminating in the awful financial crisis of 2008. Nero fiddled while Rome burned, Sants and his enforcers slept while the City went into meltdown.

But maybe it is time to cut this charming City man a little slack.

After leaving the regulator and ‘enjoying’ a brief, but ultimately difficult wade through the quagmire that is Barclays Bank, Sants finds himself on firmer soil – pursuing objectives in line with those that frame everything we do as personal finance commentators at The Mail on Sunday (consumer empowerment being to the fore).

Last week, as head of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s task force on responsible credit and savings, he outlined plans to encourage primary school children to get to grips with money matters.

The task force was set up earlier this year after Archbishop Justin Welby said he wanted to help build a vibrant credit union industry to counter the plague of payday lending – a plague, it later turned out, the Church had to its embarrassment helped by investing in one of the main players, Wonga.

Provided the task force is able to get the necessary initial funding – £1 million – from a mix of Government and financial services companies (Barclays would be a good starting point, Mr Sants), the idea is to pilot the scheme.

Run by credit unions – typically small financial organisations that allow customers to both save and borrow – clubs would allow children to save small sums on a regular basis.

Parents would be encouraged to jump on board, to help pay for future expenses such as trips or school uniforms. Pupils would also be allowed to help run the schemes, for example by working as cashiers.

If the pilot scheme proves a success, savings clubs could then be rolled out across the 4,500 Church of England primary and middle schools, supported by materials allowing teachers to give children a greater understanding of the role that money plays in our lives.

Sants says such savings clubs could help ‘transform lives through helping establish a responsible approach to money from an early age’. I wish the project every success – and there is no reason why it shouldn’t be as long as the financial services industry gets its hands out of its pockets and supports it with cash on the collection plate.

It is a fact of financial life that if you can instil good money habits in children at an early age – normally no later than seven – the result is more financially savvy individuals in adulthood.

But it will be a slow burn. It won’t solve the chronic savings gap in this country overnight. And it will do little to detract from the sad fact that as a result of Sants’ lackadaisical leadership of the Financial Services Authority in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, few people now trust any financial services company – credit union or no credit union – to look after their best financial interests.

I think I have stumbled upon the second individual who could potentially transform Barclays Bank from a bad to a good bank.

The first, Paul Collins, I identified in August. He earned his ‘transforming’ badge for his commitment to customer service par excellence at the Kensington High Street branch in West London.

Now, please step forward Greg Davies, head of behavioural investment philosophy at Barclays.

On Wednesday, while regulators here and overseas were slapping fines totalling £2.6 billion on six banks for fixing currency rates (Barclays is still arguing the toss), Davies was singing for his plate of cocktail sausages and glass of sauvignon blanc at the annual Tax Incentivised Savings Association conference in London.

The conference theme was all about getting people to save more – music, I would have thought, to the ears of Sants.

For half an hour, Davies outlined how his team of behavioural and quantitative finance specialists are helping the bank’s customers and staff make better financial decisions. It all sounded plausible and by the end I was a convert.

I am prepared to gloss over the fact that during the eight years that Davies has worked at Barclays, the bank has embroiled itself in a series of misselling scandals. Like Sants and savings clubs, it will take a while for Davies’s magic to turn around the Barclays oil tanker. But from bad to good it will head. Surely.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Chancellor has made my day - you can too

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 21:58 GMT, 6 December 2014 | Updated: 09:00 GMT, 8 December 2014

Given the continued parlous state of the country’s finances – austerity is here to stay for the foreseeable future – last week’s Autumn Statement was far more personal finance-friendly than I ever thought it would be.

But then again, there is a General Election just around the corner and voters do need to be wooed. More fool me.

Political posturing aside, let’s praise Chancellor George Osborne for providing us with a little financial cheer – far more than Labour’s Ed Balls would ever deliver if he had his wicked way (don’t let him).

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Income tax cuts: By raising the personal allowance and the higher rate tax threshold, workers will pay less tax

Increases in both the tax-free personal allowance and the threshold at which higher rate tax kicks in will be welcomed by most readers of The Mail on Sunday. I called for a hike in the higher rate threshold ahead of the Budget in March this year – 'wish' two of five that I urged Osborne at the time to grant.

Although he failed to act then, it’s good that he has finally agreed to push up the threshold to £42,385 from next April – the first increase in five years and a move that will mean 138,000 fewer people paying 40 per cent tax. Such a move, of course, was long overdue given the fact that Osborne has dragged more than one million people into the 40p in the pound tax bracket for the first time since residing at Number 11 Downing Street.

As Lord Lawson said earlier this year (he was the Chancellor who introduced the tax in 1988) higher rate tax was only 'intended for the rich, the well-off'.

Osborne also pledged to increase the threshold to £50,000 by the end of the decade – provided, of course, a Conservative Government is returned next May.

Again, it’s a smart move, putting clear blue water between a Chancellor keen to cut taxes for the hard working middle classes and Labour’s Balls who would not bat an eyelid at snaring more of us into paying higher income tax rates.

Following radical reform of Isas in March’s Budget (wish three) that has now made them far more flexible, further tinkering of this most tax-friendly of savings vehicles was not expected.

Isa allowance: The Chancellor has raised the annual amount you can save into a tax-free Isa to £15,240

So, Osborne’s decision to increase the annual allowance to £15,240 from next April was a nice surprise. Even better was his decision to allow for fairer tax treatment of Isas on death.

The tax-free wrapper around an Isa was removed when a holder died, exposing a widow, widower or surviving person in a civil partnership to future tax bills. Now the wrapper will remain intact, allowing the surviving spouse or partner to take income from it tax-free if they need to. Great stuff.

These changes mean Isas will play an increasingly key role in the retirement savings landscape in the years to come – a point also made by Old Mutual Wealth in a new report on the retirement income market.

The report says that people are working longer, reducing expectations and showing resourcefulness by using all the options available to them to generate retirement income. That means Isas and property – as well as pensions.

But by far the most radical, fairest – and long overdue – announcement contained in the Autumn Statement related to home purchases (wish three of five). At long last, stamp duty has been given an overhaul.

Stamp duty cliff edge removed: Osborne's reform of this property tax means rates won't jump so dramatically

The result is that the 'slab' structure of stamp duty has been given the boot, meaning that we will no longer have in place a ridiculous system where a £250,000 home purchase attracted stamp duty of £2,500 while a £250,001 transaction resulted in a £7,500 charge. The new system, which will remove these cliff edges, is far fairer. In March, I said stamp duty was a 'tax ripe for reform'. Osborne has responded in splendid fashion.

Of course, there is more I would have liked Osborne to have done – especially on inheritance tax where an increase in the £325,000 nil-rate band is long overdue (David Cameron has already said it should rise).

Maybe, such an increase is not affordable in austerity Britain. But more likely, Osborne is keeping reform of this death tax back for next March when he delivers his final Budget as part of the current Government. If so, it would be a surefire vote winner, especially in the South East where strong house price growth continues to push up household wealth.

Finally, it was heartwarming to hear Osborne relieve hospices, search and rescue and air ambulances from the yoke of paying VAT.

Over the years, I’ve lost too many good friends to cancer but the hospice care they received in their final days was exemplary.

I’ve also witnessed at first hand the extraordinary bravery of those who go up into the mountains of the Lake District to rescue stranded walkers.

With Christmas coming, I can’t think of a better gift than a donation to one of these splendid charities. Use gift aid and you will boost your donation. Go on, make my day.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: We must not let our high streets perish

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 21:01 GMT, 11 October 2014 | Updated: 11:26 GMT, 13 October 2014

Another week and yet more evidence that the high street as we know it is crumbling before our very eyes.

This time, the evidence, taken from 500 major town centres, is supplied by professional services firm PwC and states that 16 shops a day were forced to close their doors for the last time in the first half of this year.

All very depressing, according to PwC’s retail gurus, especially when put against the backdrop of an improving economy. But yet all so predictable when you consider that more of us (not all of us) now prefer to shop from the comfort of our armchair, a glass of Viognier in hand and computer on lap.

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Boarded up: 16 shops a day were forced to close their doors for the last time in the first half of this year

Only the combined opening of betting shops, yet more coffee outlets and American restaurants (burger joints) are preventing a near total devastation of the high street. Unfortunately, it seems that matters are not going to get any better – economic recovery or not.

Last week, a reader from Cardiff tipped me off that his local HSBC branch in Cardiff Bay is shutting in early December – a great shame, he says, because the bank has been there for nigh on 100 years and is no more than 100 yards from the Coal Exchange where the first £1million cheque was signed 100 years ago when coal was king. How times change.

The closure is one of 19 that HSBC is implementing between now and the end of the year as it continues to chip away at the size of its branch network – and is on top of the 46 it has already shut this year. In its defence, however, it is opening a new ‘flagship’ branch in Southampton – a fact HSBC is keen for me to point out and I am happy to oblige.

Equally though, I must make it clear that three existing branches in Southampton will be sacrificed to make way for it. And to think I went through university believing in EF Schumacher’s economic theory that small is beautiful.

HSBC, of course, is not alone among the banks who believe they are too big to fail, in taking an axe to its branches. Both Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland (as we reported last week) continue to reduce the size of their networks while Lloyds Banking Group is on the verge of announcing a major cost reduction programme, in which branch closures will be a prominent feature.

I am sure some town centres will survive these branch closures – especially where a banking competitor remains in situ – and there will be little or no protest from that part of the public who are increasingly happy to embrace armchair banking.

But in other locations, where the closure will result in the end of any high street banking, the knock-on effect on local retailers could well be cataclysmic.

It’s why we as a newspaper will continue to campaign for a banking presence in every town and village in this country – even if it means forcing the bosses of the big banks to push their mighty egos to one side and agree to shared premises.

This country needs banks on its high streets.

Stamp duty on home purchases is an absurd tax applied in an unfair way. And it is to the Government’s great discredit that it has failed to reform it. North of the border, however, reform is on the way.

On stamp duty, the Scots have shown the way ahead. It is time to seize the moment From April next year, stamp duty will be replaced by land and buildings transaction tax. And although the new tax is not without fault, it will undoubtedly be an improvement on its predecessor.

This is because increased tax rates will only apply to the value of a property over each threshold once it is crossed instead of applying to the whole value of the transaction each time it reaches a threshold, as is the case with stamp duty.

So, Scotland’s new property tax means that transactions under £135,000 will be exempt. Then between £135,001 and £250,000, buyers will pay 2 per cent tax but only on the sum above the nil-rate threshold of £135,000.

Any slice of a property’s purchase price above £250,000 and below £1 million will incur a 10 per cent tax charge while above £1 million, a 12 per cent charge applies. This contrasts with the current situation across the UK where no tax applies on transactions up to £125,000 but purchases above this attract a tax charge of between one per cent and seven per cent dependent on the price paid.

Pay £250,000, for example, and you will incur a one per cent stamp duty charge. But pay £1 more for your dream home and you will end up with a three per cent charge on the entire price. Madness.

A number of lenders – with Nationwide Building Society very much to the fore – have long called for the reform of stamp duty. Although 10 per cent and 12 per cent charges are too high, the Scots have shown the Government the way forward. It should seize the moment and act.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Banking that's straight out of the Wild West

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 21:01 GMT, 25 October 2014 | Updated: 09:18 GMT, 27 October 2014

How's this for a display of everything that is wrong with personal current account banking in this country.

A 21-year-old engineering graduate from Leicester University (2:1 and mighty proud of it) decides to do a little bit of travelling before chancing his luck in the British labour market (I wish I had so many years ago).

Aware that some banks don’t like debit cards being used overseas without prior notification, he goes to his local branch and tells them that he’s off to travel the breadth of America – from Boston on the East Coast to San Francisco on the West and everywhere in between. ‘Bon voyage,’ says the friendly assistant.

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Storm on the horizon: What makes this tale so depressing is that it’s not about one of the big banks. It’s about Nationwide Building Society

All is fine, that is until he sets off for his six-week sojourn. That is when the bank decides to write to him at home informing him that because he has no income coming into his account (yes, he’s on holiday) the ‘credit risk’ team has concluded it must reduce his overdraft forthwith. His overdraft, I can assure you, is not enough to bring down the bank (yes, I’m being ironic).

Of course, the customer is busy enjoying himself in the US, so he is unaware that the bank has written and oblivious to the imminent danger of being left stranded without access to any cash. The bank, keen like most financial institutions to get customers to embrace the internet and shun the high street, doesn’t think to email or text him. Funny that.

Only a nosy mother saves him from being cut off from cash while out in the Wild West. She opens the letter and makes arrangements for funds to go into his account.

I cannot believe that in today’s sophisticated banking industry, where institutions know everything about us including our inside leg measurements, a bank is sending out a letter of such financial significance to a customer – knowing full well they are out of the country.

Yet the bank in question is not as state-of-the-art as it appears. While it says a flag was put on its payment system about the customer’s travels, it admits no note was made on the customer’s main records – hence the letter going out when it did.

May I suggest that it is time for the financial institution to correct this flaw in its systems.

What makes this tale so depressing is that it’s not about one of the big banks. It’s about Nationwide Building Society.

This week, we should get a good idea as to how many bank branches Lloyds Banking Group intends to cull as it seeks to drive more costs out of its business.

Derek French, at the Campaign for Community Banking Services, says as many as 200 of its 1,300 branches could be axed. Lloyds is not alone in shrinking its branch network – Barclays, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland are all busy pruning away as we speak.

No doubt Lloyds will point to the fact that branch usage is falling off a cliff – and it may have a point. But I still think that when a closure results in a community’s last bank shutting up shop, there must be a better outcome than another bank-less high street. The time for shared branches has surely come.

Finally, compensation culture is an ingrained part of today’s financial services industry – for better or for worse. Yet some claims are more worthy than others – and I can think of no stronger one than that voiced last week outside the Houses of Parliament by former policyholders of Equitable Life, including actress Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore to men of a certain age), pictured below.

Fourteen years on from seeing their life savings decimated in the wake of the mutual’s near collapse, these elderly people are still calling for full compensation. So far, the Government has only begun compensating most of them for 20 per cent of their losses. Understandably, they want the rest.

A number of MPs spoke out last week in support of these pensioners, including Cheryl Gillan and Bob Blackman (no relation to Pussy Galore), Conservative MPs for Chesham and Amersham and Harrow East respectively. Ukip leader Nigel Farage has also lent his backing.

Talking to these elderly victims of gross financial mismanagement, it is hard to feel anything but overwhelming support for their claims for full compensation.

The customer is enjoying himself – oblivious to the imminent danger of having no cash.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Get out of Halifax Instant Saver account and find a new deal, at the double!

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 21:18 GMT, 13 September 2014 | Updated: 09:00 GMT, 15 September 2014

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Small change: Interest on the Halifax Instant Saver accounts doubles - but only from 0.1 per cent to 0.2 per cent

Oh to have a Halifax Instant Saver account (said very much with tongue firmly in cheek). On Tuesday, savers in this account will wake up to a bright new dawn as the interest they earn on their money doubles. Drinks all round I say – I prefer something with bubbles in it.

Unfortunately, the interest rate is doubling from a pitifully low base of 0.1 per cent to 0.2 per cent.

After 20 per cent tax, that means Halifax, part of the Lloyds Banking Group, will now pay 16p of interest on every £100 squirrelled away in Instant Saver.

I suppose that in an era of low interest rates – and falling savings rates – savers should be grateful for any small mercies. But if I were a Halifax Instant Saver customer, I wouldn’t be rejoicing or buying the drinks. Instead, I’d be searching for a better home for my money.

There are plenty of options available according to money guru Anna Bowes at SavingsChampion.

These include equivalent accounts from Halifax – Easy Saver, for example, pays 0.75 per cent while Online Saver is offering minimum interest of 0.9 per cent.

Elsewhere, the Post Office is paying 1 per cent on its Instant Saver account while Saga Telephone Saver Issue 14 and AA Internet Saver 16 are offering 1.5 per cent and 1.4 per cent respectively on £1,000. These two latter accounts, incidentally, are provided through Birmingham Midshires, another part of the Lloyds jigsaw. Yes, all very confusing.

So, get out of Halifax Instant Saver. And while on the subject of Halifax, if you’ve got any money in Halifax Liquid Gold, liquidate your holding now. The interest rate on this account is 0.05 per cent.

Yes, I repeat, 0.05 per cent gross, 0.04 per cent net. Laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that customers are being taken for a ride by an institution part owned by taxpayers.

One area where Lloyds Banking Group has behaved impeccably is in maintaining a commitment to the High Street. According to the latest figures from the Campaign for Community Banking Services, the country’s big four banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland) shut 149 branches between them last year – more than in 2012 (132). Lloyds, however, was not responsible for any of these, honouring a commitment made in early 2012 to put a halt to closures.

Unfortunately, this moratorium ends next February. And according to Derek French, who fastidiously assembles the branch data for the campaign, it will trigger a new wave of closures, leaving communities bankless. French has long advocated the introduction of shared branches where running costs are divvied up between the big banks. It’s a sound idea whose moment has surely come.

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Buying travel insurance can be a mug’s game, what with exclusions and excesses galore waiting to trip you up. So it’s good to see website Fairer Finance draw up a list of top providers based on customer satisfaction. For the record LV= and the Post Office triumph while Halifax and Lloyds (somewhat surprisingly) also appear on the Fairer Finance’s approved list. Policies from Barclays, Santander and Virgin Money do not.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Payback time at Tesco Bank

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:08 GMT, 1 November 2014 | Updated: 15:15 GMT, 3 November 2014

Supermarket giant Tesco may be under scrutiny from the Serious Fraud Office for overstating its profits. But its banking arm is seemingly in benevolent mode, busy handing out cash like confetti at a wedding and in the process depleting profits.

Last week, a customer of Tesco Bank took time out from looking after her newborn son, Sholto (unusual name but doing very well on all accounts), to tell me that she had just received an unexpected gift from the challenger bank – a cheque for ‘in excess of £100’. Very happy, she was.

Alas, it transpires that the bank’s generosity has nothing to do with it acknowledging Sholto’s recent birth (that’s a shame because I really would like to praise a bank one of these days). But it does have everything to do with its serial breaching of the 1974 Consumer Credit Act.

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Refunds: Tesco Bank is beginning to pay compensation for failing to send out personal loan and credit card statements on time to customers

Sholto’s mother, it turns out, is one of the first Tesco Bank customers to get compensation for the bank’s failure to send out personal loan and credit card statements on time.

Under the Act, failure to provide prompt ‘post-contractual’ information is viewed as a statutory breach. An offending bank or building society is then obliged to refund any interest or charges that were incurred in the period between when the information should have been sent and when it actually went out.

In the case of Sholto’s mother, her cheque was for the return of interest she paid on her loan between late August 2011 (when her statement was due) and mid-December 2011 (when it finally dropped through her letterbox).

It’s a shame the bank’s generosity has nothing to do with the birth of Sholto In total, 175,000 Tesco Bank customers are in line for refunds of £43 million. ‘The redress programme has commenced,’ a Tesco Bank spokesman told me last week (I knew that already, thank you, Mr Spokesman). ‘We are writing to all those affected. Customers do not need to take any action.’

Other banks and building societies are in the process of making similar refunds. In March, the Office of Fair Trading (now no more) confirmed that just short of 500,000 customers would be receiving £149 million from 17 unnamed financial institutions as a result of Consumer Credit Act violations.

With Tesco Bank having declared its hand – and assuming my maths is correct – that leaves 16 banks and building societies due to send out refund cheques totalling £106 million to 325,000 customers. It would be nice to think all outstanding refunds, averaging about £300, will be sent out ahead of the enormous expense that is Christmas.

As Tesco likes to say when it’s not busy overstating profits, every little helps.

I don't often have much nice to say about insurance companies, either, but occasionally someone from within its ranks talks a little sense. In recent years, comments from two eminent industry figures have stuck in my mind.

The first were made by Tim Breedon, at the time chief executive of Legal & General.

Over lunch and before a drop of Sauvignon Blanc was consumed, he revealed that he encouraged L&G’s claims department to rejoice in unison every time it paid a claim. ‘After all, it’s what we’re in business for,’ he said.

Given that I had always assumed insurers did their damnedest to decline claims, his comments bordered on the revelatory.

'Revelatory comments': Tim Breedon, former chief executive of Legal & General

The second comments were made recently by Nigel Wilson, who stepped into Breedon’s chief executive shoes at L&G in 2012. I will leave you to ponder whether it is a coincidence that both of these ‘common-sense’ individuals worked for an insurer that has had the gumption to head for the exit doors of the inward-looking, self-serving and rude Association of British Insurers.

Last week, Wilson described Labour’s proposed mansion tax on homes worth more than £2 million as ‘anti-London’, ‘unjust’, ‘poor economics’ and ‘pandering to the politics of envy’.

He added: ‘People who choose to prioritise the buying of a home have typically made sacrifices to do so: fewer foreign holidays, meals out or other luxuries. Through no fault of their own, their prudence would be punished by a mansion tax.’

As someone who does not own a £2 million home (and never will unless my EuroMillions numbers come up), I have no vested interest in railing against a tax that could hit homeowners with an annual charge of at least £3,000.

But rail against it I will. Irrespective of any fine tuning that Labour does to the tax’s mechanics between now and the General Election, it won’t change the fact that it is a bad tax designed by those who relish punishing the prudent and the successful. Shame on Labour.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: We neglect the personal at our peril

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:01 GMT, 3 January 2015 | Updated: 11:29 GMT, 4 January 2015

Completing a self-assessment tax return is never fun, especially if you need to seek assistance from those delightful people at Revenue & Customs who like to keep you hanging on the phone for an eternity.

But with January 31 looming ever larger on the horizon, taxpayers should be grateful for the fact that this year they won’t be tricked into filing their return through a copycat website that charges them up to £1,000 for doing so.

This time last year, copycat website taxreturngateway was making hay, aided and abetted by search engine Google that allowed it to advertise its services without proper vetting.

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Copycat websites: Thanks to a Mail on Sunday investigation fraudulent tax return websites have been shut

Dressed up to look like the official Revenue website, it tricked thousands of people into paying between £100 and £1,000 for filing a return they could have filed directly with the Revenue for free.

Thankfully, primarily as a result of investigations by The Mail on Sunday, taxreturngateway has now been closed down. Many users, again because of our work, have also received fee refunds.

It means taxpayers don’t have to fear falling for the same scam this month. But don’t think for one moment the plague of copycat websites – that promise to renew everything from passports to driving licences – has been eradicated. Far from it.

Last week, a search on Google for a European Health Insurance Card (free for travellers if obtained through the official National Health Service website) resulted in two unofficial websites appearing at the top of the list: nhs-e111.org/EHIC and ehic.eu-travelcard.org. They charge £23.50 (£24.99 fast-track) and £49 respectively.

Google must stop allowing these firms to pay for appearing at the top of searches. The Government, meanwhile, should do more to put these copycats out of business.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In a personal finance world where the faceless internet increasingly dominates, it is great when customer facing individuals and not regimented machines show their true value.

I experienced customer service par excellence four days ago - and I am still smiling.I experienced customer service par excellence four days ago – and I am still smiling from the experience.

I am also financially better off as a result, an excellent way to finish a year when demands on my wallet reached a lifetime high.

On New Year’s Eve, while most people prepared to party the night away, I cycled from The Mail on Sunday’s offices in London’s Kensington to Euston Station aboard a Boris Bike (do try one when you are next in the Big City, they’re very accommodating).

My objective was threefold.

First, to book 'weekend-first' train tickets for a forthcoming journey aboard Virgin Trains to Birmingham to see my parents (still going strong, thank you, despite having had to endure Christmas lunch with myself). The tickets were for specific trains on a specific date.

Personal service: Jeff Prestridge found a better deal for train tickets at a ticket office rather than online

Second, to use some rail vouchers I had received for a previous disrupted journey to the Midlands. For some antiquated reason, rail vouchers can’t be used online which means they can only be redeemed face-to-face at a ticket office. Horrible self-service machines, currently in the process of being made customer-friendly as a result of long overdue Government intervention, also do not accommodate them (no surprise there).

Third, to test the theory expounded by my personal finance colleagues – namely, that if you want to secure the best deals, whether it’s train travel (Toby Walne’s assertion) or energy supply (Laura Shannon’s view), online is the only way to proceed.

What I expected to happen was for the ticket office to sell me more expensive tickets than those I could purchase online. This would then prove my colleagues' theory and force me to become more online savvy while allowing me to berate rail operators for only allowing vouchers to be used at ticket offices that delight in issuing pricey tickets.

But it didn’t work out this way at all. Online, the cheapest deal offered (two single weekend-first advance tickets) was priced at £50. But the friendly ticket office man, without any prompting, suggested a cheaper strategy I had never thought about before. Namely, to buy two single standard-class advance tickets priced at £7.50 each and then to upgrade to weekend-first once aboard. This would cost me £10 each way.

So instead of spending £50 online, he came up with a deal costing £35, a 30 per cent saving.

In future, I will employ his 'strategy' whenever I want to travel in style to see my parents on a weekend.

So, long may the personal thrive in personal finance.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Payback time (at last) for hard working Middle Britain

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 21:18 GMT, 4 October 2014 | Updated: 11:31 GMT, 7 October 2014

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Promises: Prime minister David Cameron at the Conservative Party Conference

It was good last week to spend a few days in Birmingham – city of my birth – chairing a few debates on key personal finance issues of the moment at the Conservative Party Conference.

‘Brum’ has come on in leaps and bounds since the days of Peaky Blinders (a must watch) – and for that matter the late 1970s, when I literally ran away (Dick Whittington-like) to seek my fortune elsewhere.

Even the Bull Ring, once a grotesque blot on the landscape, is now a pleasure to behold and a joy to walk around. I also managed a run along the Birmingham canal and was able to admire all the retail and residential development that has transformed swathes of the city from dereliction to bordering on the chic.

On reflection, this rejuvenated ‘second city’ provided the perfect backdrop for a conference that buzzed with outpourings of good family finance news.

Even pensions, normally a conversation stopper at dinner parties, seemed suddenly to be sexy, judging by the number of clamouring delegates who fitted into the two pension sessions I spoke at (thank you to all those who came).

Certainly, it’s refreshing to know that after six tough years of financial sacrifice, there is actually a political party out there that now acknowledges it is time for the hard working people of this country to be rewarded – through higher personal allowances and a raising of the threshold at which the 40 per cent higher rate tax kicks in.

Yes, they are only promises and it might take a while – 2020 – before we see a £12,500 personal tax allowance introduced and the threshold for higher rate tax raised to £50,000. But they are pledges that are more rewarding for the hard working people of this nation than any Labour or the Liberal Democrats have so far mustered up between them.

Together with the imminent arrival of a new flexible pensions landscape that will empower people financially as they make the journey from full-time to part- time work and eventual retirement, Middle Britain is finally being paid back for helping the country pull through a sapping financial crisis.

All we now need from the Conservatives to square the circle post financial crisis is a commitment to reducing the scourge of both inheritance tax and stamp duty. Sooner rather than later, I would suggest.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Savers suffer in pensioner bond stampede as NS&I leaves over-65s in limbo

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By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:00 GMT, 17 January 2015 | Updated: 08:46 GMT, 19 January 2015

It was always guaranteed that the latest products from National Savings & Investments – the Government’s savings arm – would sell like hot cakes when launched. What wasn’t assumed was that NS&I’s IT system would respond by going into meltdown. It did. What a shambles.

With premium rates on offer and the Government as guarantor, it was a given that anyone aged 65 or over (the qualifying age) with spare cash languishing in a moribund savings account would jump at the chance of earning more from their savings.

And true to form, last Thursday’s launch of the NS&I 65+ Guaranteed Growth Bonds – one or three-year terms – resembled a pensioner’s version of Cyber Monday as people scrambled to buy the bonds online.

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Fail: NS&I’s website couldn’t cope with the high demand

Indeed, demand was so voracious that people found it nigh impossible to process their applications: NS&I’s website couldn’t cope. Its phone lines were constantly engaged.

Such an inauspicious debut hardly reflects well on NS&I’s management, led by chief executive Jane Platt, which had plenty of time to prepare for the launch of the two bonds.

Ten months in fact – ever since Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said in his Budget speech that it was his Government’s intention to launch the ‘pensioner bonds’ in January 2015.

Maybe the glitches are temporary and will be overcome but NS&I already has form when it comes to service. Its cack-handed processing of Government compensation payments to victims of maladministration at pension company Equitable Life has provoked much criticism from MPs, parliamentary select committees, this fine newspaper and, most important of all, policyholders.

So don’t be surprised if phones are not answered or if NS&I’s creaking website creaks again before too long. If so, Platt’s tenure as head honcho will look increasingly precarious.

It also raises questions over the decision to stop selling NS&I products through post offices in favour of direct sales (online, by post or telephone). I am sure many pensioners would prefer to buy these new bonds at their local post office rather than hanging on a telephone for an eternity.

Eligible savers should not be put off by the possibility of NS&I woeful customer service – sadly, endemic across financial services. The fixed rates on offer – 2.8 per cent for one year and 4 per cent for three years – are mightily attractive, unrivalled elsewhere and so are impossible to ignore.

Furthermore, with inflation down to 0.5 per cent, and possibly falling further as energy and fuel bills continue to tumble, the savings rates are truly inflation busting.

Of course, they are not suitable for all over-65s and savers need to be aware that the bonds are not without their warts. As their name implies, the bonds do not pay out until the end of their term so they will not be suitable for those in search of a regular income.

Buyers must also be confident they will be able to hold the bonds until maturity because early encashment will result in interest penalties.

Nor can they be sat inside a tax-friendly ISA unlike other competing fixed-rate savings accounts. This means interest will be taxable. For basic rate taxpayers, this reduces the rates to 2.24 per cent (one year) and 3.2 per cent (three years). For higher rate taxpayers, the respective savings rates are 1.68 per cent and 2.4 per cent while for additional rate taxpayers, the rates are 1.54 per cent and 2.2 per cent. Non-taxpayers will have to claim back the 20 per cent tax already deducted.

Despite these niggles, NS&I 65+ Guaranteed Growth Bonds are a sure fire winner. If you tick all the boxes, get in there before stocks run out. Even if you have to do a Debbie Harry and hang on the telephone for ever more.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Eureka! I have solved the loan crisis with MMR=M³

By GSpot6664:00 AMAgen Bola dan Kasino Online, Agen Bola Terpercaya, Bandar BolaNo comments

By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 21:35 GMT, 29 November 2014 | Updated: 08:48 GMT, 1 December 2014

MMR=M³. For non-mortgage geeks, this is not an equation I have stolen from one of my son’s engineering textbooks that he scatters around the house like confetti at a wedding.

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Strangling the market: Mortgage Market Review equals Mortgage Market Madness (M³)

I will keep you in suspense no longer. Ladies and gentlemen, Mortgage Market Review equals Mortgage Market Madness (M³).

Nobody surely – be they politicians or well-paid regulators – wants such an outcome. Not even the Labour Party, despite their spiteful mansion tax.

MMR was applied earlier this year by the great and good that preside over home loan regulations from their Financial Conduct Authority watchtower in Canary Wharf, London.

Challenging: Unless you are a perfect applicant, the chances of getting the mortgage you want are slim

Unless you are a perfect applicant, the chances of getting the mortgage you want are slim. ‘Perfect’ means being armed with a big deposit or a large amount of equity in your existing home.

It also means being in secure employment (few people working in the private sector are ‘secure’) and possessing a frugal rather than bohemian attitude to life (more Poundland than Waitrose).

What he was saying in a roundabout way was: MMR=M³.

It is no coincidence that post- MMR, mortgage lending has fallen off a cliff. In the past few days, the British Bankers’ Association said new mortgage approvals last month fell to a 17-month low.

And with new, attractive NS&I ‘pensioner bonds’ on the horizon, potentially denting savings inflows into banks and building societies, lenders will have less mortgage funds to parcel out.

The sooner the better. After all, MMR=M³.

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JEFF PRESTRIDGE: My sons all did me proud. Now about that student debt...

By GSpot6663:36 AMAgen Bola dan Kasino Online, Agen Bola Terpercaya, Bandar BolaNo comments

By Jeff Prestridge for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:01 GMT, 22 November 2014 | Updated: 22:01 GMT, 22 November 2014

As someone who was the first of the working-class Prestridge clan to go to university, I am immensely proud of the fact that all three of my children have thrived in further education. But I fear for their financial future.

Last week Matthew, my eldest, texted me rather matter-of-factly to say he had just been awarded a Master of Science Degree (merit) from Loughborough University, my former seat of economics and econometrics learning many semesters ago.

He’s invited me to the degree ceremony next month although he’s unsure whether he can attend. Work pressure, he says, plus the fact that he can’t afford to take time off from his job on the fitness staff at Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.

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'Tipping point': Student loan debt expected to spiral to £330billion by 2044

Meanwhile James, my youngest, seems to be enjoying his four-year American History degree course at the University of East Anglia. Currently, he’s spending year three at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada.

Having just been out there to visit him – and run along its own River Thames – I know that studying is all he will be doing during the two semesters he’s out there – other than shovelling snow (the first storms have just come).

I say this because drinking in the halls of residence is frowned upon and can result in a nerve-racking visit to the Dean – one warning for James was enough for him to turn teetotal.

Completing the trio is Mark, who is currently on the hunt for a job after graduating in the summer with a respectable engineering degree (2:1) from Leicester University.

Proud father though I am, it’s rather galling to know that irrespective of the financial support I have given them – and continue to give them – all three sons (especially James who is racking up £9,000 of debt every year for tuition fees) will now be burdened with onerous financial yokes in the form of graduate debt.

Yokes they will wear well into their 30s if not longer, primarily because any repayments they make will be insufficient to arrest the impact of compound interest on their outstanding loans. And debt that will also probably inhibit their ability to buy a first home, especially if stringent lending rules introduced by banks and building societies remain in force.

Earlier this month, the Government rejected calls for an urgent review of England’s student finance system from the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills committee. With student loan debt expected to spiral to £330billion by 2044 the select committee said the system was reaching a ‘tipping point’.

Then, six days ago, an authoritative report released by the Higher Education Commission – an independent think-tank made up of politicians, business people and academics – again questioned the future sustainability of higher education in England.

Now will the Government take note? I doubt it. After all it’s not today’s problem Nine months in the making, this report doubts a system can continue that charges higher education ‘at a rate where the average graduate will not be able to pay it back’. It further argues that the current funding model represents the worst of both worlds – with the Government effectively funding higher education by writing off student debt rather than investing directly in teaching grants.

The report’s findings should not surprise regular readers of The Mail on Sunday. In May last year, we published ground-breaking research exclusively conducted for us by Doctor Mike Clugston, a teacher at Tonbridge School, Kent.

It showed that 85 per cent of students will never repay their loans – the loans are automatically written off after 30 years – a far higher figure than Government estimates of 60 per cent. Clugston warned at the time that future Governments would have to write off ‘billions of pounds of student debt per year’.

Since Clugston’s prescient work, the Institute of Fiscal Studies has put the percentage of graduates not being able to repay their debt in full at 73 per cent – closer to Clugston’s forecast than the Government’s.

The Commission’s report offers no magic wand in terms of how to improve the funding model. Indeed, its 16 recommendations are all either vague or peripheral.

So, for example, it says the current funding model fails to meet its test of financial sustainability. But it doesn’t come up with any solutions other than recommending ‘further work needs to be undertaken to arrive at a better higher education funding model’.

Last week, Clugston told me he hoped the Commission’s report had sufficient clout to get the Government to sit up and take note. Yet I doubt it will. After all, it’s not today’s problem but one for future governments to address – and for children like mine to grapple with throughout their working lives.

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InulPoker Climbing

Instruction

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Friday, February 27, 2015

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Damn all the cuts, but credit where it's due

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Investment trusts have served us well

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Eureka! I have solved the loan crisis with MMR=M³

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Two wrongs that must be made right

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: It's a no-brainer... Fix your mortgage rate right now - preferably for five years

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: insurance companies dumping poor annuities on public

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Archbishop of Canterbury's finance task force boss must try harder

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Chancellor has made my day - you can too

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: We must not let our high streets perish

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Banking that's straight out of the Wild West

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Get out of Halifax Instant Saver account and find a new deal, at the double!

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Payback time at Tesco Bank

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: We neglect the personal at our peril

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Payback time (at last) for hard working Middle Britain

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Savers suffer in pensioner bond stampede as NS&I leaves over-65s in limbo

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Eureka! I have solved the loan crisis with MMR=M³

JEFF PRESTRIDGE: My sons all did me proud. Now about that student debt...

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