BEWARE! THE BANKS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

[Tizer]

If you ask the deceased person's bank branch immediately after the death and can show them the death certificate they will promise not to block or close the account so that the spouse can continue to access their money...BUT the head office takes no notice of that and shuts the account, much to the annoyance of the branch staff who are doing their best to please you. I know this from experience.

[Stanley]

Interesting. What happens if I make my daughter a co-signatory to the account? Would that work?

[Tardis]

If you ask the deceased person's bank branch immediately after the death and can show them the death certificate they will promise not to block or close the account so that the spouse can continue to access their money...BUT the head office takes no notice of that and shuts the account, much to the annoyance of the branch staff who are doing their best to please you. I know this from experience.

This is what happened to us and took months to unravel

[Tizer]

Interesting. What happens if I make my daughter a co-signatory to the account? Would that work?

I don't think it would make a ha'peth of difference, they'll shut the account anyway if they know a signatory has died. Perhaps the best way is for the `survivor' not to let them know about the death (although it could be awkward if there came time when both signatures were needed!).

Tardis, you have my sympathy, it's a gruelling process.

[Stanley]

There's a programme on R4 about high speed trading. Most deals are done now at the speed of light by algorithms not traders. The new Lords of the Universe are the programmers.... Good or bad thing?

[Tardis]

There's a programme on R4 about high speed trading. Most deals are done now at the speed of light by algorithms not traders. The new Lords of the Universe are the programmers.... Good or bad thing?

Don't think that it was the algorithms per se that were the issue. Spoofing and stuffing were highlighted as some of the false trading which I would have thought was of much greater concern.

You can never be sure because Peston is such a poor reporter

[Stanley]

You are wrong, the use of algorithms for implementing trading strategies was definitely a major factor in the troubles the banks got into. The managers simply didn't understand what they were unleashing and once embedded in the trading programmes they act just like a virus. It was the algorithms that created the derivatives and other 'instruments' that spread the bad debt all over the world. At the time it looked like the perfect way to unload bad debt but of course in the end undermined the system.

[Tardis]

As I understand it the algorithms feed off each other, there is some balance built into them and the 'man at the bank interviewed' did say that there were people at the desks to intervene, but in the time that it took the human to register the problem, the computer could have already completed thousands of trades when the idea has always been to be the first in and first out to maximise profit potential.

The nature of the spoofing and stuffing means that the markets are not as transparent as maybe they should be, and much easier to manipulate

As I said the explanation of Robert Peston was clumsy

For the record, the UK banks which failed, did so because of property speculation deals, easy money and the failure to regulate the escalating bubble of asset pricing. The losses on their books are write downs of asset values.

[plaques]

It has been drummed into me since the year dot that one should only gamble with money that you don’t need. My extension to this logic is that “if you don’t need it why are you trying to get more of something you don’t need?”
When we look at the banking system the last thing that savers expect is that they are entering a gambling casino. However, in this case the bet is all one way. Bankers will lay the bet for you, without your knowledge, if they win you get a small agreed percentage and by contrast they get a betting fee plus anything above your percentage. But if they lose they still get the fee plus, and here is the rub, if the loss is big enough you, the taxpayer, will pick up the overall loss. Of course they don’t call it gambling. In their terms its derivatives or sub-prime mortgages etc . A nice little earner if you can get it.

[Tardis]

A combination of low interest rates and stimulus measures means there is capacity for improved price growth over the next three years or so. But it comes at the price of later price growth in 2016/17 when interest rates are expected to start rising. Overall, this means that on an inflation adjusted basis our revised forecasts indicate that prices will increase by just 2.3pc over the next five years

House prices expected to be back to 2007 levels by 2015

[plaques]

Savills Wrote: Could someone please put this quote into plain english. There appears to be two factors here. Inflation and price growth (whatever that is). Perhaps I should just ignore the whole comment. After all they are estate agents aren't they!

[Stanley]

Can we have a report about the 'Barlick Collage' in the TSB please.....

[Tizer]

As we all know, Lloyds TSB is splitting into two banks but what some of you might not know is how much hassle this is causing their customers. My dad was with TSB in the old days in Blackburn and when he came to Somerset he continued with the Lloyds TSB branch in the local town. Now they are sending him frequent letters telling him about the coming changes but Mrs Tiz and I can't understand what's happening, let alone my old dad. First off, they are moving him into the TSB bank and tell us that he can keep his account details...but if we have any enquiries or communications about his account we have to deal with the Blackburn branch! This is bad enough for telephone enquiries but just imagine those times when you are told that you have to come into the branch to sign documents etc.

Lloyds TSB seems to be contradicting itself in some of the letters and is confused in others. They sent him a different debit card but then sent him another one later. Now he has a letter telling him again about the changes at the bank and saying that they have to suspend his credit card but he will receive a new one in due course. In the meantime he can't use the present card. The letter tells him the number of the new card that he'll receive - which isn't very helpful! I wonder if they think everyone nowadays has multiple credit cards, I don't and nor does my dad. He's going to be left without a credit card and a lot of people in that situation would be in great difficulty. I wonder if the bank execs ever consider how their customers live in the real world? Fortunately Mrs Tiz has already got him on the way to transferring his account to Nationwide who seem happy to accommodate him on a joint account with her, 94 or not 94, which gives us much more security in keeping an eye on his funds. And he's quite happy with that.

[Tardis]

I just did the TSB swop, staying with Lloyds and thus my account is now in Barlick

I had to jump through all the hoops on the phone, then went into the branch and Michelle sorted it out straight away

The only hiccup was the non-payment of my council tax, which as I pointed out was the only jailable offence that they could have conceivably achieved

[Stanley]

Barclays are pedalling furiously to prove that their shortfall of almost £13 billion in capital reserves isn't any fault of the management.

[Tardis]

Yes, Barclays is forced to reduce lending again through artificial regulation, most of which is supposed to be introduced up to 2018. They did acknowledge their ppi miss-selling provisions were inadequate too

None of this will stop a bank failure, but it is effectively reducing Barclays operating overseas efficiency. Those activities are outside the UK's remit to 'refund' in the event of a failure.

I think that the BoE are enjoying their 'new teeth' in speeding up compliance. It will be interesting to see if it increases interest rates in the market

The bigger issue is RBS which set aside another £5 billion yesterday, but surprisingly wasn't the lead item despite it being public money

[Tardis]

Lloyds on track to be re-privatised within weeks in order to be able to pay a dividend to shareholders

A profit for the Treasury?

[Stanley]

Do not believe the loss reported by the owners of Heathrow Airport until you have looked carefully into what happens to the profit they make. Private Eye did a good piece about this. It's yet another example of high interest charges on loans from the parent company being exported leaving the business with a paper loss when in fact they are making a good profit. A good way of putting pressure on their customers to pay more for services. Net result is that it is passed on to the travelling public. A Cunning Wheeze!

[Tardis]

Cunning wheeze it may be, but all totally legal in our complicated tax system and further pushed by Brown because he wanted to ensure 'growth at all costs' and now we are in a period of paying back that debt.

It is how multi-nationals minimise corporation tax within the UK, so why hasn't HMRC reduced the levels to bring those multi-nationals onto British soil? Posiibly because it would be a nil sum gain

[Tardis]

The Euro regulations appear to point at UK banks needing another £121 billion in deposits to comply within the next 6 years on assets of just £100 billion

That is a lot of market liquidity

[Tardis]

People have been number crunching the Bank of England policy and reckon that savers could lose up to £33 billion over the next three years

[Stanley]

I know the banks are nuts on security and I suppose it's a good thing but when you come up against it it can be a bit wearing. I used my credit card with its pin number for the first time yesterday. Problem was I used the pin for my debit card and in the end after three tries it shut me out. After a long conversation on the phone I finally convinced them to block the card and issue a new one as the old one only had three months to run. The only way I got them to do it was to draw attention to the fact that I couldn't travel to a bank and my eyesight was too bad to use an ATM.

[Tizer]

The banks and credit card providers are in deep do do again for mis-selling, and this time it's the card protection racket. You couldn't make it up if you tried! They've flagrantly misled customers over many years, selling them `protection' which they, the banks, are obliged to give customers for free anyway. Let's not forget that the banks have been criticising the companies that charge people for recovering their PPI compensation, saying it was wrong on the basis that customers could get the compensation for free direct from the bank. So it's OK for the bank to sell you something that they should give you free but not OK for someone else to do so? The word hypocrite comes to mind...

[Stanley]

Agreed Tiz. I have an idea I had that CPP for a while but am not going to go into a frenzy of reclamation. I shall wait and see if I get a letter... It won't be a lot, if anything at all.

[hartley353]

It must have been the 70's when I had my first credit card called Access, very shortly afterwards many others followed. Then along came CPP, IF my memory serves me well it first came into being as a service where you could register your cards, and should you lose or have them stolen it was a one stop phone call to set in motion cancelation and replacement. From this point on what was a good idea, has become another rip off scheme. Now we have a world where finding an honest financial institution is probably a futile quest.