According to a survey commissioned by BBC One’s Panorama programme, employees are £1,088 a year worse off than they were two years ago as take-home pay fails to keep in line with inflation. At the start of this year, the typical British worker earned £20,149 – a drop of 5% from what they were earning [...]
Chancellor George Osborne has had a rethink with regard to bankers’ bonuses, suggesting he may abandon the requirement for British banks to disclose the number of employees earning more than £1 million. The requirement for banks to disclose bonuses and salary payments over £1 million was brought in by former Chancellor Alistair Darling last year. [...]
According to the BBC, workers at the AA may strike for the first time since the organisation was established over a century ago. The vehicle breakdown service, which advertises itself as the fourth emergency service, is in a dispute over pensions and thousands of employees are to be balloted. The GMB union said its members [...]
Around 100 senior employees at Goldman Sachs in London are capping their 2009 pay and bonuses at £1 million each. The move comes as part of the Chancellor’s super tax, which was introduced to claw back some of the bailout funds used to rescue the banking industry. According to the BBC, the tax represents a [...]
Swiss banking giant UBS has been fined £8 million by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) – the third largest penalty ever handed out by the UK regulator. However, the fine would have been £10 million but the Swiss bank agreed to settle with the FSA at an early stage. The bank, which is Switzerland’s fourth [...]
Free evening newspaper, London Lite, has seen its future thrown into doubt today after its owner Associated Newspapers said it would begin a consultation with its employees. London Lite, which is currently losing almost £10 million a year, was launched on 30 August 2006 but its owner has recently expressed concern about the “commercial viability” [...]
UK employees are blasé about their pension fund because they struggle to see how the money saved is relevant to their current life. Research by Baring Asset Management found nearly half (48%) of Britain’s workforce have never checked their pension plan since opening the policy. The study corroborates recent findings by Lincoln Financial Group that [...]
Final salary pension schemes may not have breathed their last breath, but they are certainly on the throes of extinction, an industry expert has claimed. Dr Ros Altmann, a former academic and independent expert on pensions policy and retirement, said when final salary pensions were first conceived, it was assumed they would be funded through [...]
American Express, the credit card giant, has announced that with effect from 1 July, it has suspended pension contributions for its UK employees. The move, which affects 6,000 members, will see payments stopped for a maximum of 18 months. Many firms have adopted similar measures as the global recession has forced companies to slash costs. [...]
MPs are not the only ones fiddling their expenses according to new research by uSwitch.com. British employees exaggerate their expense claims by half a billion pounds a year, a poll by the price comparison site discovered. Sixteen percent of employees confessed to stretching their expense claims for financial gain. Nearly three million UK workers claim [...]
Aon’s UK division is proposing to cut the contribution it makes to employees’ pensions as part of a cost reduction strategy. The firm has already closed its final salary scheme and according to a BBC report is now proposing to reduce the level of its employer contributions by up to a half. Aon has been [...]
The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has announced that there will be an extension of current legislation, whereby employees with children under six or disabled children had a statutory right to request flexible working, and this has now been extended to anyone with children under 16. The Trades Union Congress has welcomed the [...]
The economic downturn has brought with it rising unemployment across the world and a survey called ‘The Global Recession and its Effect on Work Ethics‘, conducted by IT security data company, Cyber-Ark, has discovered that today’s employees will do anything to retain their jobs. Workers are offering to double their hours and take a pay [...]
M&S Money launches 3% cash ISA
M&S Money has launched an Advantage Cash ISA paying 3 per cent, and which allows transfers in from other ISAs. It can be opened with a minimum deposit of £100 lump sum followed by minimum monthly deposits of £25. The 3% rate is variable, but there is no short-term bonus so the return won’t plummet [...]
Google suspends UK Compare Mortgages site
Google has closed its UK mortgage comparison site which it launched in July last year, after it proved to be less popular than expected. Mortgage comparison sites are designed to allow visitors to compare mortgages quickly and easily without having to visit each lender’s individual site. Google was competing with several well-established comparison sites, including [...]
AA launches ‘black-box’ policy for young drivers
The AA is launching an innovative car insurance policy called Drivesafe which could help younger drivers save up to £850 a year. Younger drivers already pay substantially higher premiums than other motorists and these costs are increasing. A new study by Confused.com suggests insurance costs for younger driver have gone up by 5.7 per cent [...]
ATOL scheme updated to protect online bookers
ATOL, a financial protection scheme managed by the Civil Aviation Authority, is being extended to protect up to six million more holidays a year. The scheme ensures that holiday makers do not lose out financially if a travel company collapses, and that they are not stranded abroad. An increase in the number of holidays booked [...]
Home repossessions lowest for four years
The number of UK homes repossessed fell to 36,200 in 2011, significantly below the Council of Mortgage Lenders’ forecast of 40,000, and lower than 2010 when 37,100 homes were repossessed. With interest rates remaining low and lenders adopting a sympathetic attitude to customers in financial difficulty, repossessions fell to their lowest level since 2007. However, [...]
Monthly pay lasting just 17 days
Workers are running out of money just 17 days after receiving their monthly pay, according to new research by the Halifax bank. This means that the average UK worker spends half the month worrying about money. The study, based on the responses of more than 2,000 adults, found that 10 per cent of workers start [...]
Women disadvantaged by auto-enrolment changes
Government proposals to increase the auto-enrolment threshold to £10,000 could put 1.8 million women at risk of missing out on a pension, the TUC has warned. Under the auto-enrolment scheme, which will be phased in from October, private sector employers will automatically enrol workers between the age of 22 years and the state pension age, [...]
Emergency household repairs company Homeserve is taking longer than expected to get back on track after its operations were suspended last October. The company expected customer numbers to fall by 5% this year but it has increased this estimate to 8% and announced the loss of 200 jobs. It estimates that renewal revenue in 2013 [...]
Sale rumoured for Yorkshire and Clydesdale banks
There is growing speculation that National Australia Bank (NAB) may sell Yorkshire Bank and Clydesdale Bank after the Australian parent company announced a strategic review of the two banks’ operations. The Australian economy is performing well and NAB reported strong profits for the final quarter of 2011 but with the UK economy at a virtual [...]
More women experiencing debt difficulties
Women in Debt, which offers female-focused debt advice, has warned that the number of UK women facing serious debt has grown significantly over recent years. The organisation believes that more women will need advice on solving debt problems in the future because they are building up an unsustainable level of indebtedness. Women in Debt’s director, [...]
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