BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[Tardis]

Loving the fight over which enquiury to mount. Political smoke screens abound.

A parliamentary one might not dig very deep but it could bring up the legislation changes required.

A judge led one could not even convene until the Serious Fraud Office has finished both its investigations and possible prosecutions.

I would favour the latter, but the former will actually produce results within this decade based on past performances, and if there is any political dirty washing to be done it will certainly be completed before the next election.

Plus there is no reason why they couldn't do one and then morph it into the other, although by the time it produces a report the horse may well have died.

[Stanley]

The arguments yesterday in Parliament were disgraceful. Osborne accuses Balls and Brown directly in the Spectator, refuses to give evidence and eventually after the vote withdraws the accusations. Can't understand why Balls didn't go after him in court for defamation. Not Parliaments finest hour and I have no confidence in MPs conducting the enquiry. They failed miserably in committee against Diamond Bob. Perhaps the answer is restructure the way they operate and have a barrister to conduct the examination. It's a special skill and most MPs don't have it. BBA will be clapping hands and the SPADS will be busy.

[Tardis]

Lucy manning says that the SFO are about to announce prosecutions

[Tardis]

Oh dear Weird Ed on #WATO R4 couldn't even give the recommendations of the Vicker's report when questioned.

OK calling for all these new banks but it was him, Blinky Balls, and Brown that put all those "regulations" in place which made it so difficult to even think about setting up one in the UK.

Is it now a tacit admission that this bit of legislation also didn't work and it is a mistake that is currently "strangling the economy"?

Except there's enough money out there, it's just some folk won't pay their bills up front to allow others to use that capital to expand. Bring back Pro-forma invoicing to help cash flow, or even partial payment and escrow

[Tizer]

Another problem caused by a bank has been sorted out at last...

Farepak customers to receive half of money owed, Lloyds Banking Group makes £8m payment to the Farepak compensation fund
BBC News, 10/7/12
Customers and agents of Farepak, the Christmas savings firm, will ultimately receive half of the money they lost when the company collapsed. Swindon-based Farepak collapsed in 2006, leaving 114,000 people with total losses of £37m. Now liquidators BDO have confirmed that final payments will be made to those who lost out at the end of August. Customers have waited for the end of court cases to see a final settlement reached.

The government's Insolvency Service had argued that the high-profile collapse of Farepak had been the fault of nine former directors of the company. At a recent High Court hearing, the service had to admit that its case did not stand up, and the action was dropped. However, the judge argued that HBOS bank had taken a "hardball" attitude in dealing with the company and was partially to blame for the collapse. This led to Lloyds Banking Group, which now owns HBOS, to make an £8m payment to the Farepak compensation fund.
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18782300

[Stanley]

I saw that as well Tiz. The thing that always struck me about the Farepak affair was that the people hit hardest and least likely to be able to afford to fight were all poor. Six years..... The system is so slow.....

[Tardis]

At the time of Farepak, the bank in charge was Halifax.

I see the deputy governor of the BoE may have shot his bolt over promotion to the top job because of his performance at the select committee. Money is now moving to GO'D

[Tizer]

I wonder when we'll see a government investigation into the selling of insurance? We received our house insurance renewal letter from the Co-op and it has risen to £258 from last year's £220. I know insurance is becoming more expensive but we always try to make sure we are getting a fair price so Mrs Tiz rang around. The results are interesting and show the extent of the scam surrounding pricing of insurance premiums. For the same level of insurance and policy details, Direct Line wanted £595 and Aviva said the premium was £720 but they could let us have it for £315. She then tried the broker Swinton's and they came up with £352. She said that was far too expensive and they asked what we were being charged on our renewal - on hearing the Co-op's £258 they offered £150 cashback, making their quote £202. We are not going to take that because it's not with a well-known company, and we'll stay with Co-op. So, full marks to Co-op for being more honest with their pricing.

Now all this makes you wonder, how can Aviva afford to simply knock off £405, or Swinton's give a £150 cashback. Yes, I know they bend over backwards to get new customers but it distorts the market and makes it impossible for anyone to know what is a true, meaningful price. Many customers are getting seriously ripped off for being loyal to their insurance company. But then we know the insurance industry is deeply involved in selling on our personal data, is trying to avoid paying out to flood victims, is trying to get the government to subsidise flood payments, and I've predicted that there'll be a scandal over the mis-selling of annuities (I'll bet that Aviva is the trigger for that one).

Some of the questions you get asked when seeking a quote are ridiculous too. "How far are you from water?" "How close is the nearest tree?" I have to ask "What do you mean by water. Does it mean my ornamental pond." "What sort of tree do you mean, and how big?" It's all used as a way to convince you that they are justified in bumping up your premium.

[Tripps]

Here's my two pennorth. I got my renewal asking for £204. No need to do anything as they would take it from my bank. Next day I got an email from the same company inviting me to ask for an on line quote. This I did, and it came in at £146, for identical cover. I thought this would be for "brand new customers only", so I rang them. They said -"no that's OK we will renew at the lower quote". The explanation is that I had a gap in my relationship with them and their marketing department were still chasing me from my last period with them. There seems to no communication between their main site, and their marketing section.
In the terminology of this site, I suppose that this is a 'reverse cunning wheeze'.

[Tizer]

The retailing culture now seems to be that they more or less ask the customer what he/she wants to pay and accept that. For a long time I've said that everything is now dual-priced, one price for those who think that you only get decent goods/services by paying a high price, and another for those who always want a bargain. In the reverse of the old saying, `You takes your pick and pays your money'. It sounds like a great opportunity for consumers but really it's a mess. It does away with `value', you don't know what the true value of a good or service is, except in terms of what it means to you - but you wouldn't know what it might be `worth' if you wanted to sell it on. It also undermines businesses and employees' jobs by jeopardising the stability of the commercial organisation.

[Tripps]

There must be huge margins on house insurance. I have just had a lady from the Leeds Building Society on the phone, anxious to get me a quote. I said I had renewed yesterday, but she said I had a cooling off period, and urged me to get her quote, and then cancel. Don't know how she knew I was in the market, and aren't they a mutual Building Society, not an insurance company? I was really polite throughout - quite surprised myself......

[Tizer]

Judging from their web site they are quite active in insurance:
http://www.leedsbuildingsociety.co.uk/i ... rance.html
but be careful when you get unsolicited calls in case it's a fake. There are people who phone and pretend to be from a company, offer you a quote you can't refuse and ask for payment over the phone by credit card - then they buy lots of stuff on your card and disappear. How do they know you are up for renewal? They don't need to. They just approach you acting as if you are coming up to renewal, and they only need to be right a few times in order to make their efforts very profitable (and what does `coming up for renewal' mean - if you were a month, even 2 months from renewal you might still assume it was genuine). Genuine insurance companies might use similar tactics for all we know, as well as scammers. Take care!

[Tripps]

Wow - you're more suspicious than me. There's no danger of me doing as you suggest. By means of 1471, and google, the call came from the Stevenage office of the Leeds. I've had an account there for years - back in the day when it was worth saving. I've followed your link, and just for fun got a quote. As I guessed it is over £100 dearer than the other one, for the same cover.
On a similar topic of unsolicited calls. The bank phoned recently, and started the conversation with "and how are you today" . I told the truth- said I was quite poorly, and would she like to hear the details. She immediately said she wasn't trying to sell me something, wished me well, and fled saying take care now".......

[Stanley]

After many years I have managed to get down to one policy for contents. I have used Swinton for years, you can ring the local office in Burnley and talk to a lady who actually knows you and I have always been satisfied with them. Never had a cold call from them....



This pic says it all. The old HSBC bank in Newtown after signage, hole in the wall, night safe and many interior fittings have been removed. This will no doubt show up on their communications audit as an 'improvement' in service.

[Whyperion]

Ex HSBCs . Safe was removed by rather large truck with Hiab style crane on Tuesday. Back office fittings were taken out on Monday ( don't know if the shoving of fluoresence light fittings into a lockable wait and load skip does fully meet current hazardous waste standards) , was told that all internal fittings that were being removed had to go to waste disposal , so more questions on any kind of environmental re-use policies of HSBC. I understand the main former counters are to remain in place for now ( presumably to assist marketing of the building ? )

[Stanley]

Good, well researched article on the LIBOR scam in PE this week if anyone is interested. Much more to it than meets the eye and they give a list of other UK banks being investigated. Far more widespread than the general media has intimated.

[Pluggy]

I've started the process of shutting down my HSBC business account. Kept a few quid in there to pay any 'oversights', once I'm confident there aren't any more it's going. Everything is going through my Nationwide personal account now.

Excellent gag on 'Mock the Week' in reference to banks, about a prostitute selling pet insurance and breakdown cover You can still view it on iPlayer at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... Episode_5/

The gag in question starts at 13 minutes in............

[Stanley]

Thanks Plugs, that wasted another ten minutes!

BBC R4 9am. First edition of 'Stephanomics'. Stephanie Flanders the BBC Economics correspondent. I like her and suspect it will be worth listening to. She's going to look at the 1930s this morning.....

[Tizer]

There's no end to the misdeeds that the banks have been getting up to. All the dirty washing is being hung out. Breaking news on the BBC this morning...

Senate report: HSBC 'allowed drug money laundering'
HSBC executives will appear before the Senate committee
A US Senate probe has disclosed how lax controls at Europe's largest bank left it vulnerable to being used to launder dirty money from around the world. The report into HSBC, released ahead of a Senate hearing on Tuesday, says huge sums of Mexican drug money almost certainly passed through the bank. Suspicious funds from Syria, the Cayman Islands, Iran and Saudi Arabia also passed through the British bank. HSBC said it expected to be held accountable for what went wrong. The report into HSBC was issued by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a Congressional watchdog that looks at financial improprieties. It also concluded that the US bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, failed to properly monitor HSBC. More here: LINK

[Tardis]

Release of latest batch of BoE emails would seem to say that they were involved in the setting of the LIBOR rate.

Why be so interested in something that you are not charged with regulating?

[Tardis]

Having issues relating to a room filled with $215 million in cash. How big is the pile?

HSBC: drug money in Mexico discovered during an enforcement raid

[Stanley]

Breaking news that the Co-operative Bank are to take over the Lloyds branches up for grabs. Sounds good to me, the Co-op seem to have kept fairly clean in the recent shenanigans.

[Tardis]

I find it odd that GO has apparently had to 'lean' on Lloyds to transfer the branches to the co-op, certainly the regulators were not happy at all, and I'm sure that Lloyds would not have sold them to the co-op if it hadn't been almost 40% owned by UK finance.

they will remain branded as TSB, but under the ownership of the co-op. All the co-op facilities will be transferred onto the Lloyds computing system

Which kind of leaves me scratching my head, as that sounds like Lloyds got the co-op, rather than the other way around

Maybe it is just a 'dodge' to avoid the regulators?

[Tardis]

Reports emanating from the US, suggest that they will not allow the UK regulators to sort out LIBOR

Prepare for some extraditions and prison sentences I think. Wonder if Merve the swerve will be exempt

[Whyperion]

Did no one notice that as the number of Banks in the UK reduced ( by acquisition ) that the LIBOR rate would become less representative , with only 9 or so banks reporting it was becoming statistically unrepresentative anyway.

If I Read it correctly Co-op bank has acquired a number of Lloyds branches that will be branded as TSB at a one-off cost to Lloyds of a net £750m.