The FCA are introducing new rules to start in April 2020. They will ensure that bank and building societies will no longer be able to charge fixed daily or monthly fees for overdrafts, nor will higher fees for unplanned overdrafts be allowed over arranged ones.
35-44 year olds are most likely to have an overdraft and in 2017, banks made over £2.4 billion on overdrafts with 30% coming from un-arranged ones.
The regulator says that in the future, overdrafts will be simpler, fairer and easier to manage” with a single annual rate being advertised. There will also be a requirement for banks to do more to identify customers who may be at risk of financial difficulty.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48553193
Figures recently released by the Office for National Statistics show that wages are up again on the same time last year when adjusted to consider underlying inflation. The unemployment rate is standing at 3.8% which has not been lower since 1974 and employment rate is at 76.1%, again a record bashing joint high since records began in 1971. Part of this high figure is because the age for state pension for women has risen, so more women are still in employment. In fact, over 71% of women are in employment showing a strong trend in their rising employment. Unemployment has been falling now for 5 years.
Estimates taken from a sample of households and businesses for January to March 2019 show 32.70 million people aged 16 years and over in employment, 354,000 more than for a year earlier. This annual increase of 354,000 was due entirely to more people working full-time (up 372,000 on the year to reach 24.11 million). Part-time working showed a small fall of 18,000 on the year to reach 8.59 million.
Mainstream banks have cut their funding for property development and there is evidence that residential planning permissions have fallen by 4% between 2017 and 2018. Lending has also fallen from the £35.9 billion of 2013 to only £14.5 billion in November 2018; all this at a time when all are agreed that we are in need of new housing. These figures have been retrieved by EasyMoney in their analysis of The Bank of England’s data. The old chestnut “Brexit uncertainty” is hailed as the reason behind this fall. The question must be asked, are the mainstream banks ruling themselves out of the obvious route for business lending and is there an opportunity for alternative finance to step up to the plate?
See more at http://www.p2pfinancenews.co.uk/2019/05/20/easymoney-warns-brexit-uncertainty-is-restricting-finance-available-to-developers/
A report published by the Resolution Foundation today says that young workers who started work in 2009 are still suffering the after effect of the financial crisis. As unemployment rose, graduates were forced to take lower paid positions then they may have expected, and this has had a detrimental knock-on effect through their careers. This “crisis cohort” have suffered the worst decade of pay growth since the 19th century and even though pay is now rising quickly, it still stands £8 a week lower in real terms than before the crisis. There is no obvious light on the horizon either as pay is expected to slow again in the coming months.
For more information, see The Financial Times, Monday 13th May.
KPMG have surveyed 91 fin-tech start-ups and have found that those with at least one female initial entrepreneur have experienced more than double the internal rate of return of all male initial entrepreneurs. Of the 91 companies, 9 had at least one woman at start-up which suggests that a greater diversity should be encouraged and that such a small sample may have other factors which have influenced the figures. KPMG themselves acknowledged some limitations to the study, saying one large female-founded firm, London-based Starling Bank Ltd., which has raised 233 million pounds ($303 million), might distort the results.
However, at roughly 10%, this encouraging figure should not be dismissed.
https://finteknews.com/female-founded-fintechs-outperform-all-male-start-ups-kpmg-finds/
A lender can now place a loan part on the secondary market at either par, or at a discount.
Currently, the discounts are in increments of 0.5% and the new system is proving very popular by making the secondary market more liquid.
Here are some of our very positive customer comments so far:
“Very pleased with the VSM….it was very easy to shift some funds at a discount…. while still making a good rate of return. I can now start rebalancing into other loans and other investors have profited from my sales. Seems like a win-win. Well done MoneyThing.”
“My initial impressions are very favourable, and I have just made a test purchase at a range of discounts up to a limit that was effortless. MoneyThing, I think your techies should be congratulated on a job well done.”
“I’m impressed.” “Looks very slick.” “I had some loan parts up for sale for a while….re-listed them and they were bought in less than 5 minutes.”
Since its launch, £622,464 has been sold via the new variable secondary market. This constitutes a rise of 303% on the previous 19 day’s trading, in which £205,133 was sold, proving what a popular move this has been.