MSE News: Banks should warn over savings safety limit, survey says 10 April 2013 at 10:47AM in Savings & investments 20 replies 2.8K views

Former_MSE_Helen

"Banks should make it clear to savers when their deposits exceed the £85,000 compensation limit, an FSCS survey has found..."

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Banks should warn over savings safety limit, survey says



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Credit-Crunched

Is it really the banks responsibility?

Surely, it's not hard to undertake a minimal amount of research to establish the FSCS holder of your money and ensure its not over the £85k threshold.

Sorry, I have to go, I have tesco on the line telling me I have run out of milk and my garage phoning me up to remind me to put fuel in my car....

Is country...

talexuser

It's difficult to imagine the sort of people with more than 85k in cash not knowing as much.

But my first reaction was if it's so important to get everyone safe "do they know something in the pipeline we don't?" :eek:

Lomcevak

talexuser wrote: »

It's difficult to imagine the sort of people with more than 85k in cash not knowing as much.

They did ask MPs

Would be nice to know what the actual question was for these sort of stories and what sort of 'consumers' were asked, rather than churning out some carefully spun press release via the press association (is the "FSCS chief executive" really going to say anything other than the banks should do more to [STRIKE]promote the FSCS[/STRIKE] warn vulnerable savers)

Likewise

A previous study in December found just 12% of people knew exactly how much of their money would be protected if their bank went under.

How many of those other 88% had nothing like the level of savings required to even care what the answer was? Maybe loads knew they'd be protected at their level of savings and would never be near the limit, but it's not as nice a soundbite. For most people wondering whether £75k is or isn't protected would be a nice problem to have...

alanq

How is a bank supposed to do this when it consists of several independent business units running under one banking licence? Surely if a bank sends its customers information about the FSCS and lists all organisations operating under the same licence it should then be up to the customer to manage their own finances. The problem is that many people don't take any notice of the information that is already given.

innovate

It's sad because the survey results basically implies that 81% of MPs and 76% of consumers are financially illiterate.

talexuser

innovate wrote: »

basically implies that 81% of MPs ... are financially illiterate.

And these are the people who vote on and should scrutinise the budget on our behalf!

pengiles

Hi Just read HSBC new conditions regarding continuous Direct Debit payments these payments will no longer be covered by the Direct Debit Guarantee, another cost saving does this apply to all UK Banks?

cloud_dog

I don't think it would be unreasonable for banks / societies to be more transparent around the 'organisation' as a whole and provide a simple list of which other banks/societies are under their umbrella and therefore the same £85k limit.

The rest as they say is up to the individual.

Lomcevak

innovate wrote: »

It's sad because the survey results basically implies that 81% of MPs and 76% of consumers are financially illiterate.

Depends what the question was, though, it may be skewed towards getting an 80% 'yes'. Taking two deliberate extremes for asking the question:

- casino banks should be prevented from robbing vulnerable pensioners of a penny of their life savings.

or

- extremely wealthy people should not be bailed out by the taxpayer when they make poor financial choices.

Both questions are nonsense, of course, but you can't judge the response without knowing what the question was - which is why the 'news' is meaningless guff

Martinslovechild

It doesn't matter what the limit is, be it £85K, £850K or £8.5M, there simply is no pot of cash which will pay out to savers if the worst happens.

The media cleverly ignores this fact, the Bank of England ignores it - it's all to prevent people from withdrawing their cash in huge quantities.

The only way to pay people £85K would be to print additional cash on top of the Quantitative Easing programme currently underway.

I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in obtaining any cash deposited in a bank should it fail as - just like government pensions - there is no "pot of gold" which is invested on the taxpayers' behalf.