Banking

The Financial Conduct Authority has today announced a series of proposals aimed at improving financial services complaints handling, including banning firms from using premium rate numbers for post-sale calls and allowing people to take their complaints to the Ombudsman at an earlier stage.

The chairman of the Treasury Select Committee has written to Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS and Santander asking for more information about fraud figures after the committee heard evidence the 'banks may be understating the level of fraud in the banking system' .

Current account customers could switch bank in just five working days after the Chancellor of the Exchequer today called for a review of the switching period.

Surviving spouses can inherit their deceased partner's ISA, and it will stay as an ISA, so they won't pay tax on any gains, Chancellor George Osborne has announced.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is to pay fines totalling £56 million following an IT meltdown in 2012 which locked millions of customers out of their accounts.

Several financial firms have agreed to improve the way they deal with customer complaints and it's hoped others will follow suit, following a review by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Children as young as four are being encouraged to join savings clubs as part of a bid to prevent them relying on payday loans or racking up heavy debts later in life.

Three million Barclays customers will be moved from old savings products to the firm's Everyday Saver in February 2015 as the bank culls off-sale products.

Ulster Bank has been fined almost £2.75 million (€3.5 million) over an IT failure that prevented thousands of customers from using their accounts for more than a month in 2012.