Halifax Uncompetitive

John424

But surely the 'customer retention' rates bear some correlation to remortgage rates unless of course the bank wished to risk losing its' customer base but then if the Halifax is winding down it's mortgage book then that makes a lot of sense I guess.

kingstreet

IIRC the only Halifax product transfer rate on offer at the moment is a two year fix at around 4.59%. If anyone else can tell us if that's now out of date, I'd be grateful.

Angry_Cat

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Fractional reserve banking has increased risk. In the late 60's early 70's. Banks reserves i.e. equity plus depositers money (more or less) equalled money lent.

Roll onto to 1998 and Bradford and Bingley invented mortgage securitisation. So using fractional reserve banking. Banks started to bundle up mortgages sell them on and use the released funds to lend more money.

As money was cheap to borrow there was no problem in selling these bundles of mortgages. As banks basically intra traded with each other. Until 2007 and the music stopped. (By 2007 its estimated that over 50% of banking activity was with other other banks, not third parties).

Since 2008 JP Morgan have bought 90% of all issued UK mortgage securitisation issues. Which sums up international interest in UK mortgages now.

As banks have deleveraged from the peak, i.e. contracting fractional reserve banking. Then National Governments have been forced to inject liquidity in order to maintain stability in the financial markets. In the UK this part of the purpose of QE.

So Bradford and Bingley is responsible for the mess left by securitisation