How Safe are the UK Building societies

[Deleted User]

To answer teh first question.

No your money is not safe, the central banks will print more money to cover up all this subprime mess, creating huge inflation that destroys the value of your money in order to bail out all those that dont feel like paying back and to bail out all the private banks.

Ivan_Konstantinov

moonrakerz wrote: »

Northern Rock and Barclays are both plcs, NOT Building Societies - that's why they have shares !

The last Building Society to go bust was the Liberator in 1892.

Building society's have shares...their members. Liberator went bust in 1892, but how many have been rescued? many which we have not even found out about? Barclays feeling the pinch see here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6972537.stm
&
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6971731.stm

born_again_saver

In response to the original poster, the FSA (Financial Services Authority) guarantees you will get a certain amount of money back if your bank/building society/investment company ever folded, which is probably very unlikely but by no means impossible. The company needs to be on the FSA's register to cover this. The FSA's register can be found here, although today it's not opening for me: http://www.moneymadeclear.fsa.gov.uk/tools/check_our_register.html

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) sets limits on payouts as can be seen here: http://www.fscs.org.uk/consumer/key_facts/limitations_of_the_scheme/compensation_limits/

So effectively for savings and current accounts, you'd get most of the first £35,000 back.

catz1ct

Ivan_Konstantinov wrote: »

Building society's have shares...their members. Liberator went bust in 1892, but how many have been rescued? many which we have not even found out about? Barclays feeling the pinch see here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6972537.stm
&
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6971731.stm

Rumour has it that Nationwide didnt have enough money to pay staff wages in the mid 80's and had to merge with Anglia so they could borrow money off them! Something I heard from people with connections there at the time!

Steve_Netwriter

PBA wrote: »

To answer the original point, they haven't been applying similar lending criteria because mortgages are more tightly regulated in the UK than the USA. In the USA brokers were arranging loans with low introductory rates which borrowers would have no chance of affording when the rate went back up. If a UK broker/lender arranged even one loan without properly establishing affordability the FSA would be all over them.

Also, if one of the smaller building societies/banks was about to fail, it's more likely they'd be bought out by a larger rival rather than totally go bust, so chances are you wouldn't lose your money anyway.

That's a joke right ?
After all, we've all seen the BBC programme from way back in 2003 about liar loans. Haven't we ?

In case you haven't:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2007/08/liars_loans.html

Home loans fraud hits UK

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article2283035.ece

Steve

Steve_Netwriter

Here are a few more for you:

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Money Programme uncovers massive mortgage fraud[/FONT]
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/10_october/29/money_programme_mortgage.shtml

Mortgage customers 'urged to lie'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3222053.stm

UK Sub-prime Mortgages 2007 (Segment Report)
http://www.datamonitor.com/~0f7464213c1e4f548fc6827f67fd7aa7~/products/free/Report/DMFS2146/020dmfs2146.htm

Steve

isofa

Yes there is a bit of a mess about with borrowing at the moment. However people are unduly panicking in my opinion. What about the crazy interest rates of the 1980s, did any personal banks collapse then when millions of people lost there homes?

I'd say the only safer place for your money would be under the bed, and then it's devaluing because of inflation!

If you are really, really worried, at these hyped news reports, then split your investments between different banks/building society's around the 30k mark to be "safe", so in the incredibly unlikely event of a personal bank collapsing, you'll be covered (hopefully) by the FSA protection scheme.