By Trevor Clawson. Two years ago, the West Sussex village of Billingshurst boasted three banks on its high street, each with a convenient ATM. And if shoppers were disinclined to use the machines provided by Barclays, Lloyds and Natwest, they could always opt for the “hole in the wall” at the door of the local [...]
By Trevor Clawson. Amid the ongoing Brexit furore, other news emanating from the general direction of Westminster has largely been drowned out by the sound of MPs arguing loudly and at length over the shape of Britain’s future relationship with the European Union. Arguably then, it’s a great time for Government departments to discreetly release [...]
By Trevor Clawson. Imagine for a moment that you’re shopping for shoes. You see a pair costing £100 and a swift glance at your bank account confirms that you can afford to make the purchase. Just then a cheaper pair catches your eye, so you decide to buy them instead. This time around, there’s no [...]
By Trevor Clawson. Around two million UK adults do not have a bank account. Step back to look at the rest of the world and the figure is closer to two billion. And without bank accounts, individuals may struggle to borrow at affordable rates, buy insurance or save for retirement. Or to put it another [...]
By Trevor Clawson. Last year, around ten million people filed their Self Assessment tax returns on time, according to Her Majesty’s Customs and Revenue Commissioners (HMRC) figures. With the penalty for late submission starting at £100 and rising by £10 for each additional overdue day, there is clearly a very strong incentive to complete a [...]
By Trevor Clawson. British banks earn a huge amount of money from current account customers who regularly, or occasionally, slip into the red. In 2017, overdraft charges amounted to a hefty £2.4bn, with 30% of that total attributable to customers who had overstepped their credit limits, thus exposing themselves to additional charges. But things are [...]
By Trevor Clawson. When a technical fault within the 02 network recently consigned a small but significant percentage of the online population to a kind of purgatory from which no data could enter or escape, one commentator described the outage as a digital catastrophe. Perhaps “catastrophe” was putting it a bit strongly, but the fact [...]
By Trevor Clawson. There are few more immediate ways for a business to communicate with one of its customers than by SMS message. An email may not get read for an hour or two, even when it is sitting snugly in a smartphone inbox, but a text announces its presence with a buzz or a [...]
By Trevor Clawson. It’s very much a twenty-first-century problem. In a world where contactless cards are fast replacing cash as the preferred means to make even the smallest of purchases, the average bank statement can contain details of hundreds of transactions every month. Drinks bought at a bar, a newspaper purchased at a railway station, [...]
By Trevor Clawson. When it comes to consumer goods, there are luxuries and there are essentials. And if an essential happens to be a cooker or washing machine costing £300, then finding the money to purchase the item outright can be a huge challenge to a great many people. ‘Rent-to-own’ deals offer one means to [...]