The credit crunch has brought with it rising prices and access to borrowing much harder than it used to be. Looking at how this impacts on UK residents the Post Office, insurance providers as well as much more, have seen the over 50 market hit the hardest.
The rise in the cost of living has meant almost two thirds of the over 70s now use credit to buy basic food and groceries. This will be in the form of credit cards or overdrafts. Meanwhile 35 percent of over 50s can no longer put savings aside regularly said the Post Office insurance against harder times in the future.
Speaking of which a Post Office insurance spokesman urged people to make sure they are paying reasonable rates for their life insurance. An essential like this can still be bought effectively and as such leave a little more money for day to day costs.
Top level managers at Hastings Direct insurance company have denied rumours that job losses will be greater than that already advised.
The local newspaper in Bexhill, where Hastings Direct are the towns biggest employer, has been receiving anonymous calls saying that rather than the ten job losses that had been stated there were in fact over fifty less jobs at the company now. There was also speculation that more reductions were on the way.
To clarify the position the company released a statement in which it was made clear that redundancies would add up to ten at the most, coming from a review of operations that had been underway for some time. Any other reductions in the number of jobs had come naturally, either via retirement or by people not being replaced if they left.
Hastings Direct also wanted to confirm they are a very active and successful participant in the insurance market, with plans to develop further in the future. They also intend to retain their Bexhill offices as the centre of operations, aiming to grow further as the business expands.
The Prudential is said to be expanding the partnership it has with Standard Chartered a bank that works in the emerging markets sector.
At the moment the Prudential provides both insurance and savings products across Asia through the existing partnership, though this is set to develop with the partnership expansion. Moving forwards the Pru will be in a position to provide insurance products to customers in Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.
Current market figures show that the Prudential is the market leader for life insurance in Asia so the move into these far eastern countries is expected to be a fruitful one, the current status of the Prudential helping it quickly gain market share.
