Complete Finance Blog

The credit rating agency Moody’s recently downgraded deposit and senior debt ratings for 12 financial institutions in the UK. It believes that the largest lenders will continue to receive government support, while smaller banks will be left to fail. This recent move by Moody’s has only worsened an already shaky level of consumer confidence.

Moody’s stated that the downgrade of lenders including RBS and Lloyds does not indicate that the UK banking system is weakened. Despite this and reassurances from the British Chancellor, many savers are feeling nervous. Before they reach panic state, they should learn how to determine the safety of their bank.

One of the most important things to keep in mind is that the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) covers deposits with all building societies and banks that are authorized by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). If a covered bank defaults, FSCS will cover the first 85,000 pounds of lost deposits per customer, per bank, up to 100 percent. People should visit the FSA Web site to see if their bank is covered.

Due to the maximum FSCS compensation limits, people with deposits exceeding the threshold may want to spread their money between multiple banks. Indiv

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BlackRock again takes the top spot while Fidelity and Putnam’s efforts move them to a higher spot on the list.

Kasina reviewed the sites of 45 asset management companies looking for those that best met its criteria.

These included five categories the sites were evaluated on: Branding online services, product and performance information, support content and usability.

I found it interesting that none of the 10 players from last year were knocked totally off the list (perhaps no one off the list is spending money on their sites and materials).

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Five years ago today our little site was born. And by little, we mean little. It had virtually no content and in its first week CMT had all of six visitors.

1,587 mortgage articles, 11,809 comments, six million impressions, 1.35 million unique visitors, 1,437 tweets and 1,825 days later, there’s still no shortage of stuff to write about.

Aside from the “occasional” late nights where our laptops doubled as pillows, it’s been a great ride reporting on Canada’s mortgage world these past five years.

On behalf of our production family (Steve Huebl, Amanda Ayles, Elizabeth McLister, Leslie Blais, Melanie McLister and myself) we hope you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read and look forward to helping folks navigate the Canadian mortgage market for another five years to come.

Our never-ending thanks for reading…

Rob McLister, Ed.

Websites offering price comparisons between heating oil dealers in the UK have been sanctioned by a consumer watchdog and forced to change their practices.

An investigation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has criticised three price comparison websites for not disclosing links with heating oil dealers and even posting false testimonials.

About four million homes are not connected to the mains gas grid in the UK and more than one million rely on heating oil. Unprecedented price spikes last winter lumped many homeowners with huge heating oil bills, forcing many into fuel poverty and in need of fuel aid assistance.

The OFT found that some heating oil users could have been misled by the website, the BBC reported. The sites were not open enough about links to single supplies while looking like bona fide price comparison services.

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