The news for savers keeps getting worse. Analysis for BBC News shows that interest rates for savers have fallen to new record lows, after hundreds of cuts in recent months and more than 1,000 in the past year.
Savings rates plummeted after the Bank of England cut the base rate during the financial crisis. Now ISAs, fixed rate bonds and easy access accounts are all at or near their lowest points. In research carried out for the BBC, the rate-checking firm Savings Champion recorded 1,440 savings rate cuts last year and more than 230 so far this year. Thisismoney.co.uk reports that households with energy supplied by one of the big six providers are collectively paying £4 billion more every year than they need to by staying on a default tariff rather than switching to a cheaper alternative. According to research from energy company First Utility, this has increased 25 per cent from £3.4 billion, or £234 per household, in 2015.The website also reports that demand for homes declined for the first time in over a year in April as many brought forward their purchases in March to beat a stamp duty hike. Surveyors in most parts of the UK recorded less interest from homebuyers, with a net balance of 22 per cent reporting a fall in new buyer enquiries. But a shortage of homes on the market means prices are set to keep rising over the next few year, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors said.
Meanwhile, Google has announced plans to ban ads from payday lenders, in a move the company hopes will limit what it calls a ‘harmful’ industry. The search giant plans to stop allowing ads for loans due within 60 days or with an interest rate of 36 per cent or higher. Google’s director of product policy David Graff said: ‘Our hope is that fewer people will be exposed to misleading or harmful products.’ Many payday lenders rely on internet searches to generate customers. Banks and multinationals will be held criminally responsible for employees who embezzle funds, launder money and evade tax, under a radical reform of corporate liability laws, The Times reports. Hosting the first global anti-corruption summit today, David Cameron will announce that Britain is creating new criminal offences for businesses that fail to stop their workers engaging in fraud. The law change will give agencies such as the Serious Fraud Office powers similar to those available to the American authorities to go after big businesses in economic crime and corruption cases. Finally, the Bank of England publishes its latest quarterly inflation report later today. There is speculation the Bank could hint at lowering interest rates further from their current historic low of 0.5 per cent. Eric Norland senior economist at Chicago Mercantile Exchange told the Today programme that despite some ‘soft economic figures’ the Bank can sit back and watch the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan’s experiment with negative interest rates, before having to take take any action itself.
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