PPI, pensions, travel insurance and BT

The Financial Ombudsman Service has revealed that unresolved grievances about the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) still dominate its workload.

According to the BBC, the organisation received 150,000 new complaints in the six months to December 2016. Just over half of them – 78,000 – were about PPI policies. Chief ombudsman Caroline Wayman said: ‘PPI complaints are down, but there are some suggestions that this could be the calm before the storm.’

Meanwhile, the list of most-complained about businesses to the ombudsman is still dominated by the UK’s high street banks, and a number of credit card lenders. Top of the list in the last half of 2016 was Bank of Scotland, part of the Lloyds banking group, with nearly 20,000 new complaints. It was followed by Lloyds bank itself, Barclays, HSBC, NatWest, the credit card firms Capital One and MBNA, Santander and the Nationwide building society. Pensions A report on inter-generational fairness published by the Commons work and pensions select committee this morning calls for the end of the ‘triple lock’ guarantee on pensions, The Guardian says. MPs claim that financing the triple lock in future will not be possible without increasing the state pension age to 70.5 years. The Guardian says: ‘Under the triple lock, pensions have risen every year since 2010 by whichever is the higher figure out of the rate of inflation, average earnings or a minimum of 2.5 per cent. This has lifted many pensioners out of poverty but the committee said it had resulted in the over-65s taking an “ever greater share of national income”.’ However, MPs added that ‘making the triple lock sustainable would mean pushing the state pension age over average life expectancy in poorer areas of the UK’. Travel insurance ThisisMoney reports that holidaymakers with cruise holidays booked are being urged to read the small print of their travel insurance documents to make sure cover applies to them.

Of the 878 single trip travel insurance policies on the market, only 306 or 35 per cent include cruise cover as standard, new research from Defaqto has found. Of the 906 annual travel insurance policies on offer, 360 or 40 per cent, will cover those going on cruise holidays.

BT

The BBC reports on new plans by Ofcom to force BT to reduce the cost of its landline services.

Customers who only buy landline services from BT are set to get at least £5 a month taken off their bills under the proposals after the regulator said that these customers were not getting value for money. Around a million people in their late 70s only rent a landline from BT, says Sharon White, chief executive of Ofcom.

BT has nearly 80 per cent of the UK landline market, and Ofcom is hoping other providers will also cut prices. Car thefts ThisisMoney reports on a new car-crime league table from security firm Tracker. The company found that BMW’s X5 off-roader and the Range Rover Sport were the most stolen vehicles last year. The research comes as Land Rover revealed that Range Rovers were being stolen at the rate of more than ten a week.

In other motoring news, The Times reports that ministers face a backlash over the justice secretary’s decision to increase personal injury payouts, doubling compensation in the most serious cases and raising the cost of car insurance by up to £1,000 for young drivers. Insurers are threatening legal action over what they call ‘crazy’ reforms.

The CEOs of 15 of the UK’s biggest motor and commercial liability insurers will today meet the Chancellor and call on him to intervene and stop Liz Truss’s decision to cut the discount rate.

Finally… NFU Mutual, the financial services company, is calling on the Chancellor to simplify inheritance tax rules in the Budget after analysis showed inheritance tax (IHT) legislation is more than 126,000 words long – almost double the length of Professor Stephen Hawking’s popular book on cosmology, A Brief History of Time (65,720 words). Sean McCann, chartered financial planner at NFU Mutual, said: ‘The rules of inheritance tax shouldn’t take twice as long to explain as space, time and the universe. The current tax legislation is far too long and far too complicated, making it all too easy for people to get caught out. The Chancellor should look to simplify this already deeply unpopular tax rather than allowing layers and layers of complexity to continue to bamboozle people. At more than 126,000 words long, the legislation on IHT is unnecessarily complex and would take an average reader more than eight hours to plough through.’