'Icesave... angry, frustrated and upset...' blog discussion

dazmb

£uckless wrote: »

I have £100,000 in Icebank and having retired this was invested as my income in retirement, now it would seem, mainly lost. From the latest news it seems that only £50,000 will be covered. I also have money in Kaupthing and don't know whether this will count as another £50K covered or not.
I think all of us in this position should make an effort to stick together both for news and support - because we are going to need it, I think.
Nothing is clear about whether the bank has actually gone down, but I think we may be falling off a cliff with crys of it may not be too hard at the bottom! I heard CNN Euro news just now say "fortunately only about 5% of Icesave UK savers have over £35000 in the bank"! That made me angry - like we were nothing to worry about.Can we try to get a group together as we are currently fragmented. Any ideas? £uckless

First of all, we all need to wait to see if the bank continues on. It may do. It's not impossible for that too happen. If it does go insolvent then I have heard on the BBC that there is a proposal in the offing for the limit to be raised to 100,000 Euro's in the euro finance zone (of which Iceland is part of even though they are not EU member). So you may get more than £50k. Fingers crossed. See my previous post on Page 4 for the link to the BBC page where that 100k Euro scheme was mentioned.

d.edna

MSE_Martin wrote: »

2. There are no broken by laws in the trains article.

I think the poster is reffering to where this is mention:

Get free first class in the dining car
Some longer journeys still have first class dining cars as well as the standard buffet. These are often open to all diners, whatever class their ticket is. So go in and order a meal; while it's a bit more expensive, you can effectively travel in first class luxury for a second class price and some grub.
It's worth knowing, they do have the right to kick you back to where you belong (i.e. second class!) once you've finished eating, but it rarely happens.

I think the poster has got the wrong end of the stick somehow

£uckless

It may not make a difference but I did email the Iceland PM saying that as a pensioner I would loose all my money (£100K) if Icesave went down. At least it is something people can do - and - can we start a club so we can try to get it together and get some support and pass info? Its pretty frightening out here. £uckless

dazmb

daveclark wrote: »

Fair point but we're not talking about Ireland - the discussion is about savings that are covered by the UK regulatory system. The fact remains that ML could've simply kept his list of recommendations to those organisations covered 100% by the FSA (up to the maximum limit of course) - lets face it there are more than enough of them. If that had been his policy he would not be getting the attention he is now and savers who took his advice without doing the sensible thing and researching further would not be in the position they find themselves. It's all very well people saying what a legend he is and how he's not to blame but that's ignoring the fact that a simple policy decision to remove any risk in his recommendations would have avoided this situation. Pretty clear when you think about it.

Dave, I think you miss my point. Even if ML had limited his recommendations to fully FSA compo schemes, just like for Icesave which under a normal financial difficulty would be sweet for the £16k threshold (which I still think they will be), in the event of a massive UK financial system collapse those FSA guarantees themselves may be be worthless! What makes you think we could not suffer meltdown like Iceland. Who would stick there neck out at the moment and say it's not possible. If Gordon hadn't intervened tonight and thrown another £50bn at the major banks they could have gone under in the next few days. They still might if further shocks to the system occur. Scary, but possible. Anything is possible. The FSA guarantees are only someone's word that you trust. Just like Icesave's word was felt good in 'normal' times.....

kiranj

I managed to log in to my account to check the balance. But when i tried to print it, it logged me out! So I managed to get a print screen. Thought I might need it for the compensation claim.
If you don't have an up-to-date statement, you might want to try the same.

rabster

I would just like to add my support to Martin Lewis. Until the present financial crisis emerged, no-one could have appreciated there was a material risk of Landsbanki going under. Even so, over the last few months he has given regular warnings of the existence and detail of the FSCS scheme and its application to the Icelandic banks. This information has also always been available on ICESAVE's website, as a legal requirement. Obviously, though, most people pay little attention to the prospect of a bank going bust - and this would remain so no matter what advice or warnings they were given.

No-one is directly to blame for this - not Martin Lewis, not the UK or Icelandic governments, not even the directors of Landsbanki. We should stop trying to apportion blame, focus on getting our money back and lend our support to those who, like the lady who posted earlier with £750,000 in an ICESAVE account, may stand to lose substantial amounts of money. These are the real victims of the current crisis.

david72

While I can understand that many people are extremely worried about what will happen to their money, there does seem to be much blame being most unfairly pointed at Martin.

A friend told me about this website 2 or 3 years ago, and like all of us here, I have greatly benefited from the advice of Martin and everybody else who has contributed to the website.

Martin has never pretended to be a formal Financial Adviser, and if anything, I am sure he would not disagree that two of the main messages he has tried to promote through the website are: to take personal responsibility for your finances (rather than trust the banks to act in your interests); and to always keep an eye open for changing circumstances and for new better deals.

Yes, I followed Martin's recommendation of Icesave, and I did enjoy over 9 months of very good interest rates, but I also later learned through this website of potential troubles in Iceland's financial situation (which made me decide, in the end, not to open this year's ISA with Icesave).

Then, when Martin - rightly - drew extra attention to the complexity of the Icesave deposit protection arrangements, combined with the worsening global financial situation, I decided that it was time to move my funds from Icesave "just in case", a couple of months ago. I'm now very glad that I did (although I wasn't as on-the-ball with B&B, which certainly also caused me a fright (although the warning signs had also been there previously), but fortunately that has worked out OK), but it does show the importance of regularly taking the responsibility to check how your investments are doing, especially if it is money you cannot afford to lose.

I am fairly sure that strings will be pulled so that investments in Icesave, up to the protection limit, will be covered in due course, but, unfortunately, I am also sure that because of the complex arrangements - which we have all been warned about - it will not be as simple or as quick a process as it would have been were Icesave a fully UK-regulated bank.

£uckless

Should we loose money because of Icesave can we claim anything from tax relief/Capital Gains etc.that we might usually pay? Any ideas?
£uckless

daveclark_2

dazmb wrote: »

Dave, I think you miss my point. Even if ML had limited his recommendations to fully FSA compo schemes, just like for Icesave which under a normal financial difficulty would be sweet for the £16k threshold (which I still think they will be), in the event of a massive UK financial system collapse those FSA guarantees themselves may be be worthless! What makes you think we could not suffer meltdown like Iceland. Who would stick there neck out at the moment and say it's not possible. If Gordon hadn't intervened tonight and thrown another £50bn at the major banks they could have gone under in the next few days. They still might if further shocks to the system occur. Scary, but possible. Anything is possible. The FSA guarantees are only someone's word that you trust. Just like Icesave's word was felt good in 'normal' times.....

We could go on like this all night! The fact is Iceland's GDP is tiny compared to the UK's (The UK is something like 140 times bigger which is a very large number indeed) and the Iceland situation simply isn't going to happen in the UK - despite the scaremongers out there saying we're in meltdown. Sure, we're in a very serious situation but if a country that is 5th in the world in terms of GDP can't guarantee it's savings then we may as well turn out the lights and head to the beach. I'll leave you with one final point - will ML be recommending this type of product in the future? I'm guessing he won't be! It will be strictly those savings schemes that are water-tight from now on.

john_holgate

I have made very substantial deposits in my IceSave account over the last couple of years, and feel very fortunate indeed that today my balance showed only £1.00.

I was not at all aware that some banks were able to circumvent the safety of FSCS with the "passport exemption". I expect there are many people who are now concerned that the exempt portion of their savings has been additionally jeopardised like this without it being made explicitly clear to them.

Since the Icelandic government appears to have bankrupted the entire nation and the country's credit rating is so low that they have had to turn to the Russians for help today, it seems that the exemption to the protection is not a safe way for foreign banks to be allowed operate in the U.K.

I will not be using any exempted accounts in the future.