Some people who were mis-sold pension annuities will have to be compensated to restore £120-£240 a year, the Financial Conduct Authority has said.
In a review of annuity sales practices, the financial watchdog said that a small number of firms failed to tell customers that they could shop around or could get enhanced annuities because of being ill. In total, 90,000 people could have been affected by the annuities mis-selling, though the FCA said this was not systemic nor an industry-wide failure.
In other pensions news, the
reports that workers could be allowed to retire at 60 if they accept a smaller state pension in retirement.
A review is considering plans to allow certain individuals to take their pensions early if they sacrifice around £35 a week from their payouts. They would receive £120 a week instead of the £155 paid at the official retirement age, currently 65 for men and 63 for women.
Sir John Cridland, the former CBI boss who is conducting the review, will unveil his final recommendations to the Government in March. He was commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions to investigate ways to make sure that the state pension age is set at a fair level.
Women are paid less than men at every stage in their careers but the gender pay gap is widest during their 50s, according to new analysis published in
The pay gap begins as soon as women start working and is at its greatest when a woman turns 50, with female employees cumulatively £85,040 worse off than men over the next decade, according to TUC analysis of figures from the Office for National Statistics.
The TUC analysis shows that the gender pay gap widens steadily from 9.1 per cent for 18-year-olds to 25.9 per cent for women in their 50s and then falls slightly to 22.8 per cent for those in their 60s.
Tesco
Marmite supplies were being restored to Tesco stores on Wednesday night after a consumer and political backlash against the product’s manufacturer, Unilever,
The Times reports.
On Tuesday, the supermarket withdrew Marmite and dozens of other Unilever products from its website after the company demanded a 10 per cent price increase because of the rising cost of imports following sterling’s slump to a 31-year low.
But after a day of recriminations, including the Government appearing to side with Tesco, Unilever announced an end to the dispute.
Sterling
Comments from the president of the European Council Donald Tusk and the French finance minister Michel Sapin have helped push the pound down further today.
Tusk said Britain’s only real alternative to a ‘hard Brexit’ is ‘no Brexit’. Speaking in Brussels, he warned that the EU would not compromise on its insistence that freedom of movement will be a condition for Britain’s access to the single market.
Sapin then said this morning that some US banks are already looking to move their operations out of London in favour of the continent.
Mortgages
Homeowners and prospective buyers are being warned not to be seduced by eye-wateringly low two-year mortgage rates, as changes in the British economy could mean they could end up costing them in the long run.
Thisismoney reports that mortgage rates have fallen to their lowest ever level since the UK voted to leave the European Union in June, with the cheapest deal available now fixed at less than 1 per cent for two years.
But after months of lenders slicing their rates to entice homeowners to remortgage, John Charcol, a firm of mortgage brokers, is warning that unless there is a good reason to take a short-term deal, borrowers could be safer fixing for longer.
Children
Millions of parents are continuing to fund their adult children’s lifestyles after they’ve flown the nest by paying bills such as TV subscriptions and car insurance, according to research from Freesat.
The study of ‘empty-nesters’, all of whom have children who have left home, found more than one in ten paid for their grown-up kids’ TV subscriptions.
The research follows figures widely-circulated this year, which estimated that the so-called Bank of Mum and Dad would lend £5 billion in 2016 to help children on to the property ladder. According to the Freesat study, a further 18 per cent of empty-nesters paid mobile phone bills for their adult children, while 12 per cent covered the cost of food shopping.
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