Happy New Year! Now is the perfect time to get your finances in order, tackle your debt
and fend off scam artists. Crooks take advantage of the calendar when planning their schemes to take your money, and theyre using your attempts to make a fresh financial start as their peg right now. You need to be particularly careful before signing up for any of these e-mail credit-card deals or debt-relief programs, and be suspicious of a few other seasonal scams, too. Heres what to watch out for and how to protect yourself.
Credit-card scams. Just as you start the year resolving to pay off your bills, scam artists step up their efforts to steal your money.
Read full post…
The British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA) has launched a sanctions checking facility which will help brokers and insurers in screening their clients.
Currently under the Terrorism Act, it is an FSA requirement for any insurer or broker to ensure every client is not on an HM Treasury (HMT) list which identifies people involved in terrorism. Companies are also required to re-check this list every time the list is updated.
Until now, this screening process was sporadic, often neglected, and varied from company to company. T
Read full post…
The insolvency professionals body R3 has issued a serious warning to anyone considering taking out a personal loan to pay for a holiday this year, saying that debt management problems could soon follow.
Research undertaken by R3 shows that as many as 1.8 million people borrowed money to fund a trip, getaway or summer holiday this year. In particular, the 18-24-year-old age group was the most likely to take this option to pay for holidays.
However, R3 warns that taking out a loan in order to go on holiday could result in severe debt management problems when people return home again.
Read full post…
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has announced the launch of a new market study into motor insurance, which could be good news for people left with debt worries by the cost of running a car.
Evidence collected by the body indicates that UK insurance premiums increased by about 12 per cent between 2009 and 2010, with a further nine per cent rise recorded in the first three months of 2011.
According to the OFT, the study will look particularly closely at the provision of third-party vehicle repairs and credit hire replacement vehicles to claimants.
This is an area where the organisation believes features of the market are currently restricting and distorting competition.
“We suspect companies may be competing to extract money from each other rather than keeping premiums as low as possible and providing car owners with value for money,” said Sonya Branch, senior director of services, infrastructure and public markets at the OFT.
The Consumer Prices Index inflation rate fell to 4.8 per cent in November 2011, it was revealed yesterday, but this left the rise in the cost of living still at over twice the governments target rate, maintaining the pressure on indebted consumers.
You have to wonder what anyone is thinking when they commit a crime, but credit cards crimes seem to really lend themselves to that question. You’ll see what we mean in a moment, as we present the latest in strange and unusual credit card crimes and wonder, “What were they thinking?”
Don’t use a stolen credit card where people know you
The crime: According to the Santa Clara (Calif.) Weekly, a local senior citizen had her credit card stolen. She noticed when she received her bill, which had $8,000 in charges she hadn’t made. It was used at two separate places.
What was this crook thinking?
Read full post…