The Alliance and Leicester is passing on the Bank of England base rate cut to its customers by reducing the interest rate on most of the savings accounts it offers by the full 0.25 percent.
The changes by the Alliance and Leicester will come into effect on 2 May, with only a small number of accounts not having their interest rates cut. These will include the Premium Regular Saver, eSaver and their ISA products Premier ISA and Premier ISA 2.
One other Alliance and Leicester savings account, the Direct Saver, will have an interest rate cut of 0.23 percent rather than the full 0.25. Other financial institutions are expected to follow suit, looking at ways to improve their profitability and cash flow in these difficult times.
A new survey by Saga Insurance has found that the grown up children of elderly parents may well end up financing their parents long term care from what was their inheritance.
As a company that works exclusively with the over 50’s Saga Insurance took the opportunity to discuss their plans and found that only 10 percent of people have actually discussed long term care for elderly parents. More worrying still perhaps is that nearly half of them fail to appreciate the actual costs, which are around GBP25 – 30,000 per year.
The view of nearly 60 percent of those who discussed the matter with Saga Insurance is that any inheritance will be used to finance the long term care parents may need. A large part of this may be that, with all the other financial pressures on people, trying to put aside money for parental care is just not possible, at least for the majority of the population.
A new capital account has been launched by Zurich Insurance, called the Green Guaranteed Account. It offers returns based on stock market investments into green businesses.
The RBS Green Index lists only those organisations operating in the environmentally friendly categories, such as biotechnology, solar power, wind and water power etc. Investors in the Zurich Insurance account will have their capital protected whilst being in line for 100 percent of growth enjoyed within the sector.
A spokesman from Zurich Insurance felt this Green Guaranteed Account was ideal for investors who wanted to support the environment whilst earning a return on their investment.
