Housing, banking, cash machines and car insurance

Hardly a day goes by without commentary and new research on Britain’s housing market. Now the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has said that the market ‘stuttered’ at the end of last year and has started slowly in 2017. The Guardian reports that sales activity fell in December and estate agents are less optimistic about prospects over the coming months. Rics said: ‘It remains to be seen if this is a temporary setback. The number of house sales in the UK faltered in December, and predictions for expected new sales over the next three months were also pared back.’ Banking jobs ThisisMoney reports on comments from Stuart Gulliver, the head of HSBC, who has strongly indicated that the bank will move 1,000 jobs responsible for a fifth of the revenues of its UK operations from London to Paris as a consequence of Brexit. Swiss bank UBS has also said today it would ‘have to’ move investment bankers from the UK capital to Germany or Spain because of Brexit.

The banks’ announcements follow the speech made by the Prime Minister yesterday in which she detailed plans for Brexit, saying that the UK would definitely quit the single market.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times has analysed plans by the big banks to shift jobs out of London. The paper says that, in addition to UBS and HSBC, JP Morgan Chase says that more than 4,000 staff could be moved. Cash machines In the UK, we are well used to withdrawing our money for free. But news has emerged that thousands of Link cash machines could begin charging for withdrawals following a row about fees among members of the ATM network. According to The Guardian, ‘the dispute centres on a move by some of the financial firms which use the Link network to reduce the fees they pay to allow their customers to withdraw cash from most of Link’s 70,000 cash machines across the UK. About 40,000 of these are provided by independent suppliers to the network, the rest by banks and building societies. More than 97 per cent of transactions through Link machines do not levy a charge for customers withdrawals. The fee paid by card issuers is based on fixed formula.’

Car insurance

The Sun reports that car insurance costs have soared by 52 per cent over the past decade, with prices now £767 on average. The paper said that if prices continue to rise as they are, ‘drivers will be on course to pay more than they did in 2011 – when premiums were at their highest in 10 years, at £858 a year’.

Financial commitments

Millions of Britons are set to reach a financial crisis point today according to analysis from uSwitch.com, the price comparison and switching service. A payday gap of up to 45 days between December and January, combined with heavy spending over the Christmas period – a third more than any other month – has forced many consumers to start 2017 in the red and on the financial back foot.

Compounding the effect of the longer wait between pay days is the UK’s inflation rising to a two year high. A third of adults are concerned they won’t meet all their financial commitments this month, with the figure rising to over two-fifths among those aged 18-34.

According to the research, it will take the average consumer between one and two months to recover financially from this December spending debt burden. However, for two million people it will take until the summer of 2017 to get over their debt hangover.

Pensions

Aegon research reveals that two thirds of people have multiple pensions but more than one in five of this group has lost track of one or all of their pensions. As a result more than 6.6 million people may have misplaced some of their retirement savings.