Legislation / Legal
FSA: The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has welcomed the move by Alliance & Leicester, Barclays, The Co-Operative Bank, Lloyds Banking Group (including Lloyds TSB, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland), and RBS/Natwest to stop selling single premium Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) with unsecured personal loans by the end of January 2009.
Some of these firms, along with other market players, now offer or plan to offer regular premium PPI instead of a single premium product. The FSA expects other firms still selling single premium PPI to take note of these developments.
The FSA recognises the importance of appropriate protection insurance in the current economic climate, but remains concerned over the standard of sales of single premium PPI. Customers being sold this type of product should be told how the product works, what it covers and how much it costs – especially as the cost of the PPI is added to the loan and interest charged on this amount.
Press release ~ Payment protection insurance choices ~ Competition Commission ~ FSA response to CC’s provisional Decision on Remedies
CompC: The Competition Commission's (CC) determination on price control matters in appeals brought against Ofcom by Hutchison 3G (H3G) and British Telecom (BT) has been published. This determination was sent by the CC to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (the Tribunal) on 16 January 2009. The appeals were brought against Ofcom's March 2007 decision on wholesale mobile phone voice termination charges.
As a result the CC has determined that the charges for connecting to the O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone networks should be reduced to 4.0 pence per minute (ppm) (1) by 2010/11. Ofcom had decided that they should fall to 5.1ppm by 2010/11. The CC has also determined that the charge for connecting to the H3G network should be reduced to 4.4ppm by 2010/11. That is 1.5ppm less than the price control under Ofcom's decision.
FSA: The Financial Services Authority (FSA) last week extended its waiver from complaints handling rules regarding unauthorised overdraft charges, for up to 6 months. This is because the test case is ongoing, and it is not yet clear how the banks should be responding to complaints about unauthorised overdraft charges so that customers are treated consistently & fairly.
The waiver was due to expire on 26 January 2009. The extension has been offered to those firms who signed up to the July 2008 waiver. This represents approximately 98% of the market. Whilst the waiver is in place, signatories will not be required to handle complaints relating to unauthorised overdraft charges within the time limits set out in the Dispute Resolution manual.
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