Brexit, housing, pensions and personal injury claims

Sterling has fallen to its lowest level against the dollar since early July after Theresa May set a date for starting Brexit negotiations.

The Prime Minister said she would trigger Article 50, the clause needed to start the process, by the end of March 2017. That means the UK is likely to leave the EU by mid-2019. A short while ago the pound was down about 1 per cent against the dollar at $1.2854 and nearly 1 per cent against the euro at €1.1440. Housing In a sign that the Government is planning to reset its fiscal policy, the new Chancellor, Phillip Hammond, is to unveil a £5 billion house-building stimulus package later today. In his speech to the Conservative Party conference he will announce plans to spend £2 billion and use surplus public land to encourage new developers. The Government will also spend a further £3 billion on loans for home builders and long term infrastructure projects. The aim is to appeal to those who have been shut out of the housing market by years of rising prices and tough lending conditions. Pensions Companies will take more than 20 years to fill the shortfalls in their pension funds, according to Goldman Sachs, which says that the collapse in bond yields since the Brexit vote has hugely inflated the cost of future pension promises. The warning comes before this week’s release of results from Tesco, which is expected to be the first of many leading employers to reveal the added pressure on its pension fund, one of the biggest private sector schemes in Britain with 350,000 members. In a report to clients seen by The Times and titled Troubling Times Ahead for UK Pension Schemes, Goldman said a typical scheme that in 2010 expected to climb into the black in ten years was now looking at a 23-year time frame. All companies will have to grapple with ultra-low bond yields, which are used to put a present-day cost on future pension promises. Tesco alone has said that each 0.1 per cent drop in yields adds £312 million to its liabilities. Yields are down by 0.98 per cent since the referendum. In other pensions news, new research has found that 85 per cent of people don’t understand what a pension is – leaving them vulnerable to financial hardships when they retire. Pensions advice specialist Portafina conducted the research with 1,500 adults to find out the extent of knowledge and understanding of pensions across the UK, and discover just how financially prepared we really are for retirement. Some 47 per cent of people say they have not given retirement much thought, and 40 per cent admitted that they find pensions and pension-related terminology too confusing. Worryingly, over one-in-ten admitted they don’t have a pension set up at all. Personal injury claims

Insurers are starting to win the battle against false personal injury claims, including whiplash. But there are questions over whether £1 billion in savings are being passed on to honest customers.

The Financial Mail on Sunday reports that the number of insurance claims for personal injury following an accident has fallen dramatically in the past three years – a drop of nearly six per cent to 770,000.

The figures, compiled by the Government’s Compensation Recovery Unit, show half the total arises from motor accidents. At the same time, the typical cost of a claim has fallen by £124 to £10,600.

Day trips

New figures from VisitEngland show that Britons spent a record-breaking £5.5 billion on day trips across England in August, the highest spend recorded for a single month since the day-tripping survey began in 2011.

August also saw the highest number of day trips taken in any month since 2012, with 151 million day trips across England, up 14 per cent on August 2015. The figures bring overall domestic tourism day trips in England from January to August to 988 million, up 14 per cent on the same period last year with spend up 9 per cent to £32.2 billion, both records for a first eight months of the year.