Barclays Bank has just announced a massive investment in Glasgow which will create a new technology and functions hub and up to 2,500 jobs. The bank says the new project will play ‘a pivotal role’ in its ‘long term strategic priorities.’
Blog Category: Personal Finance
A new report from Britain’s financial regulator warns consumers ‘there’s no such thing as free banking’ revealing just 10% of bank customers generate between a third and a half of all profits from the current account system which allows ‘free access’ to cash for users.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) review of the way Britons use their banks found that the UK’s biggest lenders have tightened their grip on the market in the decade since the financial crash.
CYBG – the former Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank – has bought Virgin Money for £1.7 billion to make it the UK’s sixth largest bank.
It has also reached an agreement with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group to licence the brand name for £12 million a year, rising to £15 million in the future.
The new firm will have assets worth £70 billion and more than six million customers.
TSB chief executive Paul Pester told MPs yesterday that his bank had lost around 12,500 customers since suffering an IT meltdown six weeks ago.
He also confirmed that there have been at least 10,600 fraud alerts and 1,300 cases where customers lost money. Overall, the bank received 93,700 complaints from angry customers.
Financial experts are speculating that the government is about to re-start the privatisation of Royal Bank Of Scotland (RBS) with a multi-billion pound share sale.
Sources say that investors have been primed to expect the sale of up to £3 billion worth of the government’s 70.5% stake in the bank.
Southwark Crown Court has dismissed a series of charges against Barclays relating to billions of pounds in loans back in 2008.
The charges were brought by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and were potentially extremely serious because if parent company Barclays plc and Barclays Bank were found guilty they could have lost their banking licence.
The number of consumers using their smartphones to run their bank accounts has soared in recent years.
Together with internet banking, they have been blamed by many of the high street banks for the need to close branches across the country as customers change the way they handle their money.Read More
Another crisis appears to have hit troubled TSB as customers start to complain their bank accounts have been emptied and there was no warning about suspicious activity.
Victims told a BBC radio programme that their accounts had been emptied, but they hadn’t received a single warning text or phone call from the bank.
Senior officials of TSB have been called to appear before the Treasury Select Committee to explain the spectacular crash of its online banking service to MPs.
The committee will take evidence from TSB chief executive Paul Pester and chairman Richard Meddings as well as a representative of the bank’s Spanish owners, Sabadell.Read More
Shocking documents have come to light revealing that the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) uses computers rather than humans to decide on appeals for rejected PPI claims.