WALKING past High Street banks, it's easy to be dazzled by the figures in their high interest account ads - but you should take a closer look. Research from financial statisticians Defaqto has found a lack of understanding of how these accounts work as well as their conditions may give savers a nasty surprise.
WHEN a neighbour alerted Richard Poole to a suspicious conversation she had overheard between his elderly father, Leonard, and a member of staff at his HSBC branch, he thought little of it at first. But when he looked at his father's savings passbook after the neighbour's comments in March, Richard was horrified to discover that more than Pounds 40,000 had been taken out of the Premier Savings account over nine months. Although Leonard, 90, suffers from dementia, Richard was certain the withdrawals had not been made by his father.
Accounts in this table are independently researched and are ranked purely by the highest rate paid for the appropriate terms. They do not reflect the financial strength or security of the deposit takers. The level of protection varies. For up-to-date details, visit thisismoney.co.uk/safe-savings. To find the best rate, select the sum that you want to invest and then read across the top row for the time you are prepared to lock it away. All rates shown are gross annualised. INSTANT ACCESS, POST, NO-NOTICE ACCOUNT UP TO 90 DAYS' 1 YEAR'S 3 TO 5 YEARS' Pounds PHONE OR BRANCH INTERNET ONLY NOTICE NoTiCE NoTiCE 100 ING Direct Santander Northern Rock AA * AA Savings Account E-Saver (issue 3) Branch Saver 90 1-year Fixed 5-year Fixed 3% T 3% b 2.5% 3.4% DFP 5% DFIP Tel: 0800 376 7799 santande...
OPEN an instant-access savings account with your average high street bank and you'll almost certainly find yourself losing money on your nest egg. The average interest paid out on instant-access savings accounts is hovering at a stingy 0.18% before tax, according to the Bank of England. That's far below inflation -- now standing at 4.8% as recorded by the retail prices index -- meaning almost all savers are seeing the value of their money erode in real terms.
AT first glance, the rules seem simple. Under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, up to [pounds]35,000 of savings per person - [pounds]70,000 for a joint account - is protected in the unlikely event of a UKregulated bank or building society going bust. But then things get a little more complicated. Though the scheme protects savers with companies regulated by the Financial Services Authority, the different way that banks have registered with the FSCS means the cover is not always as generous as it might appear at first.
THE penny dropped slowly, but painfully, for an army of small savers in 2010: feeding money regularly into a bank or building society account is hardly worth the bother. With savings rates so far below the level of inflation, a national newspaper stunned its readers last week by telling savers they should either put spare money into equity income funds, which hold shares in secure global companies paying healthy dividends, like GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Royal Dutch Shell and Vodafone, or blow it.
Q I have a savings account and an 18-month fixedterm account, plus normal savings and current accounts with Bank of Ireland. I am worried about how safe they are. There are two State guarantees.
With a new tax year approaching fast, how many Britons really know what an ISA is? Individual Savings Accounts were introduced back in April 1999 replacing old style Personals Equity Plans (PEPs) and Tax Exempt Special Savings Accounts (TESSAs) Basically an ISA is a tax free savings account in which you can have cash or shares. According to a Royal Bank of Scotland survey, 36 per cent of Britons have cash ISAs but would be savers are still confused by the product. More worrying is the survey result that found that 24 per cent of those Britons who do have an ISA don't fully understand how the product works.
case study: one thing Katharine Shaw does not want to do is to end up in debt, so she decided to start saving as soon as she started work. Katharine, pictured, who is training to be a hairdresser in Edinburgh, has been saving pound(s)50 a month in a Bank of Scotland Regular Savings account for the past four months.
ON Saturday I received a phone call from a member of the transsexual community saying that they had a letter from the Ministry of Works and Pensions. It was pointing out that they need to change the way the pension is being paid to this person. Then I saw in the financial pages of a paper a large item looking at this very point. The person who phoned me is in their late 80s. They have had to suffer a large part of their life from the state not considering them for their way of life, so why does it mean that they cannot go on receiving their pension each week by Giro, in the way they have from the day the pension books were removed from service? Most people of that age did not have a bank account, other than the old National Savings Bank account savings stamps, and then a good few years ...
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