MSE News: 69% chased by claims management firms in the past year

Former_MSE_Callum · 20 June 2018 at 4:27PM

Seven in 10 UK adults have been contacted by a claims management firm without permission in the past year, new data from the financial regulator shows...

Read the full story:
'69% chased by claims management firms in the past year'

Click reply below to discuss. If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply.

Ezorqs · 20 June 2018 at 4:49PM

That will have been a fun survey.

20th Claims Management Firm: Hi Mr Lewis, it has come to our attention that you were involved in a car accident recently and that your car was damaged, did you know that you can...
Customer: GOD DAMN I DON'T OWN A CAR! I DON'T EVEN HAVE A LICENCE!

...ten minutes later...
MSE: Hi, we're wondering if you've been contacted by a claims management company recently?

...yeah that went down real well.

Paul_Herring · 20 June 2018 at 7:33PM

57% of UK adults have no cash savings or savings of less than £5,000

Er - neither do I. Because I begrudge being paid a pittance to have it lying around in a low-interest paying savings account.

Doesn't mean I don't have reasonably quick access to that sort of sum, without going into debt.

Nice of the MSE news article to fail to provide a link the FCA's site (https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/research/understanding-financial-lives-uk-adults)

Questionnaire at https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/research/financial-lives-survey-2017-questionnaire.pdf

Likely question that resulted in this 'statistic':

You mentioned earlier that you have the following:
Approximately how much money, if any, do you have in these savings products? £0 £1 - £999 £1,000 - £1,999 £2,000 - £2,999 £3,000 - £3,999 £4,000 - £4,999 £5,000-£9,999 £10,000 - £14,999 [etc]

Yup. I'd be answering under £5,000 for that.

Merlin139 · 20 June 2018 at 7:59PM

Why don't you tell us how we can make sure that no claims management firm contacts us without permission?

The one that happens most often is the line that there is a sum of money set aside to pay for the injury you got in the accident that if you do not claim goes to the government.

My wife used a said Claims Management company last year when her new KIA Rio was parked by the side of the road and hit by another driver. Kia Assist who KIA say that if you use they will refund your excess even if you are at fault. KIA Assist passed her claim to be managed by Kindertons. The Hire car provided a Honda Civic was billed at nearly £75 per day. The repairs took 3 attempts to complete and the whole length of the claim was extended by Kindertons just to increase the cost of the claim.

As a result of this claim my wife has been contacted around 200 times by various companies to get her to claim for injuries during the accident. She was around half a mile from the car at the time so how has she been injured? All of these companies come out with your details have been passed by the Motor Insurance Bureau!

May I suggest that MSE spends some time at trying to put a stop to this?

For those employed in this practice you chose the job! We did not choose to be plagued by your telephone calls!

Gordon_the_Moron · 21 June 2018 at 8:47AM

My favourite responses to these idiots

Them: we hear you had an accident that wasn't your fault...

Me: Yes I had a head on collision with a lorry, I was killed wooooooo

Me: Yes, I was hit with a rhythm stick do you think I may be entitled to compensation with a personal Ian Dury claim?

Me: Yes I was
Them: Excellent what's your name
Me: I lost my memory due to a brain injury in the accident I can't remember, since you heard I was in accident can't you tell me that?

:cool:

Nasqueron · 21 June 2018 at 9:48AM

Paul_Herring wrote: »

Er - neither do I. Because I begrudge being paid a pittance to have it lying around in a low-interest paying savings account.

Doesn't mean I don't have reasonably quick access to that sort of sum, without going into debt.

Nice of the MSE news article to fail to provide a link the FCA's site (https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/research/understanding-financial-lives-uk-adults)

Questionnaire at https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/research/financial-lives-survey-2017-questionnaire.pdf

Likely question that resulted in this 'statistic':

Yup. I'd be answering under £5,000 for that.

5% savings are easily achievable with accounts from Santander or First Direct, 3%+ on savings accounts.

57% of adults will be stuffed if they lose their jobs and I bet a good chunk could save if they didn't waste money on things they don't need

Nasqueron · 21 June 2018 at 9:49AM

MSE_Callum wrote: »

Seven in 10 UK adults have been contacted by a claims management firm without permission in the past year, new data from the financial regulator shows...
Read the full story:
'69% chased by claims management firms in the past year'

Click reply below to discuss. If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply.

I wonder what Martin and MSE will be saying at the next downturn when people can't pay their mortgage and have complained about their MPPI and had it cancelled - maybe make miss-selling complaints to MSE for encouraging people to put in speculative complaints about their policies

Paul_Herring · 21 June 2018 at 10:44AM

Nasqueron wrote: »

5% savings are easily achievable with accounts from Santander or First Direct, 3%+ on savings accounts.

No they aren't. You might want to read the small print...

https://www.santander.co.uk/uk/savings

5% is for a regular savings account. And that's only if you hold one of their other accounts. It drops to 3% otherwise.

Their normal savings account, if you had £5k languishing around which you wanted to deposit immediately, would only get 0.25%

https://www1.firstdirect.com/1/2/savings-and-investments/savings

5% for regular saver, again.

Normal savings account: 0.5%.

Nasqueron · 21 June 2018 at 11:21AM

Paul_Herring wrote: »

No they aren't. You might want to read the small print...

https://www.santander.co.uk/uk/savings

5% is for a regular savings account. And that's only if you hold one of their other accounts. It drops to 3% otherwise.

Their normal savings account, if you had £5k languishing around which you wanted to deposit immediately, would only get 0.25%

https://www1.firstdirect.com/1/2/savings-and-investments/savings

5% for regular saver, again.

Normal savings account: 0.5%.

None of that contradicts what I said. You can have an account with Santander earning 1.5% on the £5000 and a savings account with 5%. Ditto First Direct

If you want to be difficult and/or not have any preparation if you lose your job, so be it, the 43% with planning sense who make sacrifices to ensure they have a safety net use the accounts system to the full extent. Just look on the banking forum for people who have multiple current accounts who bounce the cash around to maximise earnings. I currently have a 2% (might be 2.5%) with Halifax, 5% with Santander, 2.55% or something like that with Leeds BS plus a S&S ISA - rather have 4-5x monthly salary sat in savings accounts in case the worst happens than worry about sky tv or having the absolute latest tech etc

Paul_Herring · 21 June 2018 at 11:57AM

Nasqueron wrote: »

None of that contradicts what I said.

Of course it does - it so totally does. You said

5% savings are easily achievable

I've just pointed out that, no. They're not. Not with the banks, nor accounts, you cited.

And certainly not for a cash buffer, which implies you already have the money hanging around looking for somewhere to be deposited.

You can have an account with Santander earning 1.5% on the £5000 and a savings account with 5%. Ditto First Direct

But you can't have a (normal, no deposit-limit, short-term-access) savings account with 5%.

Only one where you can drip feed a couple of hundred quid a month in, which averages out to under 3% using those numbers, presuming you're using the 1.5% account to drip feed into the 5% one. And even then you can only drip feed £2,400 into the account over it's lifetime, then you have to start-over from scratch.

So, (roughly, and assuming your "6 months buffer" is £5,000)

£2,600*1.5% = £39 (the amount that will never see 5%)
£2,400*1.5%/2 = £18 (of the money that will see it, effectively half of it will be earning 5%)
£2,400*5%/2 = £60

So a total of £117 on £5,000 which is... 2.34%.

Still a pittance. And that's before tax.

And it's worse if your '6 months' buffer is more like £10,000 (1.92%) though I suppose if you open another 3 current accounts (and associated regular savings accounts!,) you could get that closer to 3.25% using those 1.5% and 5% rates on account.)

If you want to be difficult and/or not have any preparation if you lose your job, so be it,

I'm not being difficult, and I am prepared. But I'll stick with the where I've got my 6 month's buffer TYVM. Which isn't in savings accounts, accessible within a month ('immediately' if a CC is used in the interim, and paid off on the next payment cycle,) and earning more than shuffling money between current and savings accounts.

But it still means I have under £5,000 "saved" if I were to answer the question in that questionnaire as presented, even though I'm not in the position of the "57%" I'm alluded to be.

So. My original point stands. I'm apparently part of the 57%, but how that 57% figure is being bandied about is wrong by implying that they're all utterly unprepared and utter spendthrifts - either the question is wrong, or the conclusions being drawn from the answers are wrong.

Or both.

[Deleted User] · 21 June 2018 at 12:47PM

Merlin139 wrote: »

May I suggest that MSE spends some time at trying to put a stop to this?

How do you propose a simple website "put a stop" to something governments across the world have roundly failed to do?

If you truly received 200 calls with regard to a particular "accident" then you really need to invest in a call blocker or even consider changing your telephone number.

MSE News: 69% chased by claims management firms in the past year

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