Icesave: how safe are your savings? Facts and myths

strav100

I think there is 150,000 people affected -most with savings below (£16,000) - yes I have £15,000 - I stupidly transferred £5,000 over to Icesave 2 weeks ago :mad: - it looks Iceland won't have enough money and never had enough money (88 million in the compensation scheme (only 5500 savers with £16K). The wording the bank and the FSC informed us we were protected. We were not. The Government has to honour the full £50,000 - they can't pick which bit of the £16,000 they want to compensate. Germans and Irish are enjoying full compensation now :mad:

And it was for a tax bill - so they will get it back anyway !

If the UK Government back out on this they obviously have no will to fight the next general election - it will total suicide

born2run

Wanting to close this for today (I've been hopping between this board and the carnage that are the world stock markets all day!) here's my list of possible positive outcomes to this situation in descending orded:

1) Icesave stay solvent - reopen their internet site Friday - we all live happily ever after:beer:

2) They go bust but promise to pay up within 4 weeks and they do (at the same time the British Govt bail out anyone with more than £50k in the bank so that no-one loses)

3) They go bust but can only part pay up - the other Nordic banks come to the rescue and make up the shortfall - British Govt acts as 2)

4) They go bust refuse to pay - British Govt steps in and pays all - behind the scenes severely beats up the Icelanders to get the money back

5) They go bust refuse to pay - british Govt threatens to freeze all icelandic based UK assets - maybe starts another Cod War!

In all of the above we get our money back - I'll save my negative list for another time.

Good night and Good Luck to all.

Aurelie_2

hello, any news on that? I have requested a transfer on Monday, can't see the transfer on my Icesave account (account is closed down, looks like).
It has not arrived on the other account either...

If any one has got news, it would be appreciated...

jaigee wrote: »

What happens to those of us with "processed" transfers which now look as if they will not be actioned, even though our accounts reflect that they have? Will these be eventually actioned (doubtful), or will the money be reinstated to the account?

I should imagine that they will take far longer to sort out seeing that the money is in the system somewhere and not recorded as being in the account.

Also, what happens to all the lost interest while this money sits in "no man's land"?

MarketRisk

i also did a chaps transfer, over the phone, because unable to login yesterday at 3:10pm. closed account. account closed, but no sign of the money in designated bank account.

if account closed prior to freeze then shouldn't that be legally binding?

also, is it legal to have one rule for icelandic depositors and another for foreign depositors?

we really need some legal advice.

perhaps we can set up two groups:
1. for those that completed transactions prior to freeze

2. for those that are from holland and britain and think it is illegal for differentiation between depositors depending on country of origin.

anyone know of any lawyers with expertise in this area?

i call it theft.

wadeall

I'm sceptical that UK savers will see a payout form the Icelanders. The Icelandic Government has understandably said that the domestic investors will be a priority. Indeed their have deposits have been guaranteed in full and they are free to withdraw money up to their credit limits in Icelantic ATMs.

We can probably resume that the British business was stripped of cash prior to going bust in the same way that Lehman was. Who knows what assets were booked in the Uk or whether the UK has a business has a charge over them. In any case the administrators are not in charge as yet so presumably the Icelanders are busy repatriating any assets.

Meanwhile Iceland economic position is disastrous. The Russian loan of Euro 4 bn seems much too small to make a difference. Presumably all Kaupthing Edge's depositors are removing their cash as soon as they can so its probably only a matter of time before that goes under too. Iceland's GDP was around GBP7 bn prior to the recent currency collapse so its in my view highly improbable that they are going to be in a position to cover GBP4bn of Uk deposits.

The UK authorities are going to be furious at developments. Effectively it may well end up that Iceland has stolen GBP4bn from UK investors /taxpayers. Their official position is likely to be that the Icelanders should be responsible for the first GBP16000 per depositor as as soon as they say they will cover the full GBP50 k, there wil be zero chance of getting anything form the Icelanders or other Nordics who apparently had some sort of cross guarantee arrangement, which I suspect will prove unenforceable.

The Government ids probably trying to figure out right now what to do. Edidie George at the bank of England is likley to argue that payouts should be limited to GBP50k and that any Icelandic hole not be covered by the UK. The FSA will probably argue that at least the Icelandic hole should be covered and maybe all deposits. There about 300k Icesave account holders. Including family members probably at least 500,000 voters would be effected. Anyone who loses say 10k savings despite being told a few days beforehand by Brown thatall UK savers up to GBP50k is not going to vote labour, so my guess would be that these people are baled out. Only 15,000 have accounts in excess of 50k and given the widespead publicity that only 35k was covered (until Midnight yesterday), it would not be unreasonable to argue that these people took a risk and just like shareholders shouldn't be baled out.

strav100

300000 Icesave account holders
500000 family members involved - lost a lot of money
Talk to at least 10 people - 5,000,000 against Labour
Plus the hammering from the press
If the PM and the cabinet don't sort this out - they will be out in a matter of days not weeks!!

cornubian

Quote:
Martin - as you can see there will be a few sleepless nights as a result of the events of today - me for one. I know from posts i have seen on your site before you do take this personally. Perhaps as one saver has suggested we need to group together and ensure this does not get buried along with all the other bad news and the plight of 300,000 savers does not fade with the one week attention span of politicians. You might want to think about being the champion/advocate/voice of the 300,000 savers who need to come together and challenge what i believe to be an illegal act on behalf of the Icelandic Government.
Well said, and as I said previously:

When I opened my account in September 2007, this message was on the ICESAVE site:

”Deposits made with Icesave are protected under the Icelandic Deposit Guarantees and Investor-Compensation Scheme (details of this scheme may be obtained from www.landsbanki.com/legislation). Payments under this scheme are limited to the first €20,887 (or the sterling equivalent) of your total deposits held with us.

You have further protection from the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme (www.fscs.org.uk). Payments under this scheme are limited to 100% of the first £2000 of all your deposits with us, plus 90% of the next £33,000 of your total deposits with us, less any payments made under the Icelandic scheme. This means that the maximum claim amount as at June 2006 is £31,700.”
http://www.icesave.co.uk/financial-protection.html

Quite clearly, the message is that my money had/has a double guarantee of safety. Now we are hearing that the FSCS only compensates for sums lost between €20,887 and £50,000.

The questions is, why did the UK FSA and FSCS allow ICESAVE to operate in the UK on the strength of misleading guarantee information and is there a degree of domestic liability here?

The answer must surely be Yes. And yes, the Icelandic banking institutions and Government are culpable for offering worthless guarantees, but so too are the UK monitoring agencies for allowing a bank to operate in the UK under a pretext which was plainly false. Not only was the pretext false, but the FSA and FCSC were aware that it was false, and are thus liable for the consequences.

Yes Martin could do himself a favour by championing out cause and spearhearding a savers protection group, but his attentions should be focussed not just on Iceland, but also on those Governmnet agencies closer to home which allowed the "obtaining money by deception" situation to exist.

I have emailed the FSA yesterday asking just what the hell they were playing at, and if they will honour the full 50K, but do not expect a hasty reply. Perhaps Martin, could try on our behalf.

From experience, it is better to unleash our collective firepower now rather than later for once Government [or any administrative body] has made a decision, it is incredibly difficult to reverse/overturn that decision.

wadeall

Darling has just announced on the BBC that the Icelanders scheme is bust but that the UK will payout on the WHOLE of Icesave's deposits.

Edinburghlass_2

Martin has a thread here...

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=14796675#post14796675

cornubian

The UK Chancellor said on the BBc that these were exeptional circumstances and that in this unique situation the UK Government was prepared to guarantee UK savers all their Icesave deposits. He said that the UK Government would be pursuing the Icelandic Government [presumably for some sort of return on its unforseen expenditure] and that an announcement in Parliament would be made at about noon today.