Insurance comparison websites

The FSA has been reviewing insurance comparison websites. It wants to be sure that they are all clear and fair.

They say the overriding principle for firms to comply with is that the information provided to consumers must be clear, fair and not misleading. In particular:

• Where an insurance comparison site uses assumptions to generate quotes, we expect any assumptions made to be reasonable, and clearly highlighted to consumers;


• Sites comparing a limited number of features, and in particular where comparison is only on the basis of price, should explain to consumers in a clear and timely way that the products being compared may have different features, and that features, other than price, should be taken into account before purchasing a policy;


• Firms should have processes in place to ensure that all information provided is correct and updated on a regular basis. This includes an expectation that firms will have systems and controls in place to ensure that the information provided by consumers is correctly relayed to the broker or insurer.


• Firms should take a consistent approach to the provision of information, and the basis for providing certain pieces of information should be clearly explained to the consumer;


• Firms should not give a misleading impression of their market coverage.

One good idea is to shop around the comparison sites! And not all big insurers will necessarily paticipare in all of them.

Repossession orders rising

The number of orders made by the courts in England and Wales at an early stage of the repossession process rose 17% in the first quarter of 2008 compared with the same period of 2007, from 2,438 to 27,530.

The repossession figures for the first half of 2008 will be published in August. The Council of Mortgage Lenders predicts that there will be 45,000 repossessions in 2008, up from 27,100 in the previous year. This compares with 11.8 million outstanding mortgages in the UK.

The government says there will be more free legal advice for those at risk of repossession, along with specialist training for debt advice agencies.

FSA strikes off mortgage broker

A mortgage broker in Old Kent Road has been struck off by the FSA for submitting false mortgage applications.

They found that Isah Attayi Mohammed, principal of Initial Financial Services (UK) Ltd, had included inflated income statements, inaccurate employment details and false sets of accounts in mortgage applications for himself and for his customers.

Do more to protect customers' personal details, warns FSA

The FSA is urging firms to change their attitude to data security and do more to help prevent their customers falling victim to identity fraud and other types of financial crime.

They say:

It is worrying that despite increased public awareness of the impact that identity theft can have on customers, many firms are still not taking this risk seriously. Customers have a right to be confident that firms are doing everything reasonably possible to keep their personal and financial details safe.

It is good practice to encrypt laptops and transfer data to third parties using secure internet links.

Next time customer data hits the public domain, these are two things to look for.

A tangled supermarket

It's ISA season again. Been a while since I browsed moneysupermarket.com

How it's changed. It used to be a nice, straightforward comparison site. Now I feel bombarded by advertising, the advertisements seem to run in with the best buys in ways I can't easily grasp, and I can't see how to go beyond the best buys to examine rates further down.

A disappointing experience, but I suppose that's what happens when you become a publicly quoted company. They floated with a large market value, so they must be doing something right!

Bank charges case only the first step

The OFT win against the banks on the charges issue is only the first step. A further court hearing is scheduled for 22 May and the banks are expected to appeal if they lose.

Vince Cable says:

In case after case brought against the banks by angry customers, they have been unable to show that their penalty charges bear any relationship to the costs they incur. The massive penalty charges imposed are yet another example of the major banks taking consumers for a ride.

The people hit by these charges are often those least able to afford them. Many overstretched families have found their own banks pushing them further into debt. The banks can receive unrivalled guarantees and support from taxpayers when things go wrong, but continue to make huge profits at the expense of their customers."

FSA fines Liberata £525,000 for customer document failings

The FSA has announced a fine of £525,000 for third party administration firm Liberata Financial Services Limited (Liberata), for failures in its systems and controls for producing and issuing documents to life and pensions policyholders.

The FSA said Liberata's failings meant that there was an unacceptable risk that any of the 1.3 million policyholders whose policies it administered would not receive important financial information to help with their investment decisions and, consequently, could suffer financial loss.

The failings resulted in 30,000 policyholders not receiving information, of whom 161 suffered financial loss amounting to £17,584.

The FSA determined that the firm acted recklessly in failing to heed warnings in its management information that documents were not being produced.

HSBC loses customer data

In a major loss of customer data, HSBC has owned up to losing a computer disc four weeks ago with information about 370,000 customers.

The customers' details included their names, dates of birth, and their levels of life insurance cover. HSBC says there are no addresses or bank account details, and on this basis maintains that customers' exposure to potential fraud is limited.

HSBC are keen to stress that the data was password protected (which isn't usually hard to break), so it probably wasn't encrypted.

The disc was sent by courier. Now, we know that couriers lose some things. So the question is: what proportion of items entrusted to them do couriers lose? And how many discs containing customer information are HSBC sending whizzing around the country?

Of course HSBC could keep the data secure if they paid one of their employees to take it directly from A to B. But doubtless it's cheaper to use couriers and accept that from time to time chunks of customers' data will go missing.

Nationwide and the Norwich Union have suffered heavy fines and public reprimands for not looking after customer details properly.

More at risk of repossession?

Government figures suggest that nearly 60,000 homes might be at high risk of repossession.

The Housing Statistics 2007 report says that almost 60,000 families with disposable incomes below £1,000 each month are paying £750 a month on mortgage payments. Nearly 20,000 families earning up to £1,000 per month are spending 100% of this on mortgage repayments.

As food prices, petrol, and taxes rise, disposable incomes will probably fall. That will put them closer to the tipping point - especially those who are on cheap introductory offers which they can't refinance.

And the values of their homes probably won't have risen meanwhile.