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BUPA has reported a 47 per cent increase in profits, driven by strong growth in its expatriate health insurance business.

The private healthcare group, in its first set of results since selling its private hospitals unit to become a pure health insurer and operator of care homes, said that pretax profits had risen to £166 million for the six months to June 30.

It said that health insurance customers had increased by 3 per cent, lifted by strong demand from the expatriate corporate sector. Revenues of the UK insurance arm, which provides medical insurance cover for 4.3 million customers, including expats, increased by 5 per cent to £956.6 million. The care home unit increased its revenues 8 per cent to £310 million, with its profits 13 per cent higher at £55 million.

BUPA sold its 26 UK private hospitals to Cinven, the private equity firm, for £1.44 billion in July.

As a provident organisation, BUPA does not have shareholders and profits are ploughed straight back into the group. BUPA was established in 1947, has more than seven million customers in 190 countries and employs 44,000 people.

The former BUPA hospitals business, under its new ownership, is to be rebranded Spire Healthcare.

Alliance & Leicester has claimed that its new personal loan rate is the best in the UK.

Available from September 17th to November 4th, the new interest rate is 6.3 per cent and is on offer to new customers as well as existing Premier and Premier Direct customers.

Borrowers can take advantage of the rate on loans worth between £7,500 and £15,000.

“We continue to offer our customers best of breed deals across our range of products, and are constantly looking for additional ways to reward existing customer relationships,” said Richard Al-Dabbagh, senior personal loans manager at Alliance & Leicester.

He added that the bank has “consistently led the field” with its current accounts offering.

Alliance & Leicester last month launched its Premier 21 account, which is targeted at the 43 per cent of the UK’s 16 to 21-year-olds who are not heading to university this autumn.

As many as one in four drivers in the UK happily bend the truth when relaying the details of their vehicles in order to save money on their car insurance policies, according to new figures.

Confused.com, the price comparison website, has revealed that despite the fact that nearly all (96 per cent) drivers are aware that giving false details could invalidate any claim they may need to make in the future, around 25 per cent of motorists will willingly distort the facts for the purpose of bringing down premiums.

“If you are caught lying about your details, your insurer can reduce your pay out and may even refuse to pay at all,” warned Debra Williams, Confused.com managing director.

She advised: “Don’t risk waiting until your policy is up for renewal, as if you need to make a claim and a previous incident has not been reported, you could find that your policy isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

There are over 25 million private car policy holders in the UK.

Hundreds of customers lined up to withdraw their savings from a British mortgage bank Saturday, ignoring government assurances that their money was safe despite the bank’s request for an emergency loan.Police were called in some cities to steer panicked crowds away as Northern Rock bank branches closed for the day.

Fears have spread over the bank’s request earlier in the week for an emergency Bank of England loan amid the global credit crisis. Northern Rock, Britain’s fifth-largest mortgage lender, is the first British bank in 15 years to be bailed out by regulators.

Customers withdrew $2 billion from the bank Friday, The Financial Times reported, citing an unidentified person described as close to the situation. The bank declined to confirm the figure, which represents 4 percent of its deposit base.

Treasury chief Alistair Darling and the country’s Financial Service Authority tried to assure customers there was no doubt over Northern Rock’s solvency.

The authority “has reiterated yet again tonight that it is satisfied that Northern Rock is solvent, can carry on doing business and, crucially, paying out money if people want to withdraw their funds,” Darling said on Channel 4 TV on Saturday night.

But The Sunday Telegraph said Northern Rock was preparing itself for a sell-off. Quoting unidentified sources, the paper said one plan would divide the bank’s mortgage portfolio between other major banks in what would be a private-sector rescue of the lender.

The bank made the loan request Thursday because it relies heavily on wholesale money markets for cash, and had been unable to borrow the amounts it required from other banks since the money markets choked up last month. That was caused in part by U.S. banks making mortgage loans to Americans with poor credit histories.

Although Northern Rock requested substantial emergency funds at a penalty rate, the bank has said it had billions of pounds in cash at its disposal. It has yet to draw on any emergency funding.

Despite Darling’s message, lines stretched around the block Saturday at some of the bank’s 76 branches in Britain and the bank extended opening hours to deal with the situation.

“Yes, we are making matters worse, but I do think people need some reassurance from Northern Rock and the government and financial services that their money is safe,” account holder Jane Taylor told Sky News while waiting outside a branch in Kingston-upon-Thames, west of London.

But others said they had faith in the bank and financial authorities and watched the lines in disbelief.

“It’s mostly, in my opinion, ignorance and that’s why they’re panicking,” said another bank customer who gave only his first name, Tom. “I’m leaving mine there.”

Under Financial Services Compensation Scheme, deposits of up to $63,900 are guaranteed should a bank default.

Ron Stout, a spokesman for Northern Rock, told The Associated Press that reckless comments by some analysts about the bank’s solvency prompted customers to panic and line up outside branches or strain the company’s online banking system.

He said Northern Rock would continue to extend its banking hours, by opening one hour ahead of schedule on Monday, and to reassure customers that their investments are safe with the bank.

Northern Rock’s crisis is just the latest indication that the easy credit conditions of the past decade may have come to an end for homebuyers.

The group had ramped up its mortgage lending in recent months. For example, it was one of the pioneers of lending first-time buyers more than the value of their houses – up to 125 per cent – through its “Together” product.

Many lenders are still reliant on funding through “retail” deposits from customers but others, such as Northern Rock, depend on a functioning bond market to sell on their mortgages to institutional investors.

Halifax and Abbey have both nudged up the rates on some of their variable tracker deals by 20 basis points this week. Norwich & Peterborough Building Society has cut its maximum loan to value ratio from 100 per cent to 90 per cent.

Most experts believe that lending criteria, by Northern Rock and its peers, will become even more strict, given the prevailing mood of uncertainty. That can hardly fail to feed back into the strength of the housing market itself.

The housing boom that began in 1995, two years before Tony Blair came to power, was founded mainly on an availability of cheap debt rarely seen in previous decades. Not only were interest rates low by historic standards, hitting a trough of 3.5 per cent in 2003, but as prices rose, year in and year out, lenders began to relax their criteria as they jostled for market share. This was the era of unparalleled latitude when it came to mortgage lending.

First-time buyers were offered mortgages of up to 125 per cent loan-to-value.

Landlords were able to take out multiple buy-to-let loans where net rents did not even have to cover interest costs, in contrast to previous practice.

With house prices continuing to increase – even now they remain about 10 per cent higher than this time last year – there were few negative repercussions.

Defaults and repossessions have more than doubled since their low point in 2004 but are still way below their level during the last recession of the early 1990s.

Yet house prices are now looking more vulnerable to a correction.

A survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors this week was the most pessimistic for two years. Property agents seeing price falls outnumbered those reporting gains by 1.8 per cent, it said.

And yesterday’s September survey from Rightmove suggested asking prices had fallen by 2.6 per cent across the country when compared with August.

Sentiment has been hit in London, in particular, by fears that end-of-year bonuses in the City will be much smaller than last year.

“Confidence is very important to the housing market, especially in central London, it has become so hot, pricing was so far ahead of itself, it was at unsustainable levels,” said Richard Donnell, head of research at Hometrack, the property information group.

“The gap between asking prices and achievable prices could be quite sizeable over the next few months.”

Northern Rock was last night considered a takeover target after it emerged that the bank had sought emergency funding from the Bank of England to bolster its balance sheet and prevent it breaching solvency rules. The bank, which has seen its value halve over the last year, was expected to be vulnerable to a predator keen to exploit its problems.The decision to seek emergency funding was also likely to trigger a collapse in confidence across the banking sector as concerns escalated over the fallout from the sub-prime lending crisis in the US and its effects on global markets.

It became famous for its mortgages with 130% loans to the value of the property that helped thousands of first-time buyers on to the property market. Borrowers would combine unsecured loans with their mortgage in order to buy a home. But the deal remained vulnerable to increases in interest rates and easy availability of credit on international money markets.

The bank is not likely to be the only one affected by the credit crunch. A report by Ernst & Young’s Item Club warns today that homeowners, the City and the high street could all feel the pinch if the problems in global credit markets start to bite.

In a report looking at the economic impact of the credit crunch, the forecasting group says around one percentage point could be knocked off UK economic growth if the turmoil worsens, bringing the rate down to 2% from 3%.

Peter Spencer, chief economic adviser to the Item Club, said the deteriorating US property market posed further risks to global growth. “The US housing sector has been weakening for some time and now faces a double-dip depression,” he said.

Financial institutions also face large losses from the fallout in the US sub-prime mortgage market. “The basic problem was that high-risk mortgages have been bundled up with corporate debt in structured debt products, causing much wider contamination,” Mr Spencer said.

“Given that the US sub-prime mortgage market is $1.5 trillion in size, a reasonable estimate of losses could be $100-150bn.”

He said the volatility stemming from the losses would also hit UK consumers.

The insurance industry has launched a major initiative to help tackle climate change and encourage consumers to be more environmentally friendly.

Sixteen global insurers, reinsurers and brokers have developed a series of principles which aim to do everything from reduce the environmental impact of their own businesses to rewarding customers for cutting their own greenhouse gas emissions.

The groups claimed the ClimateWise principles, which a further 21 insurers have signed up to, would enable companies throughout the world to build climate change into their business operations.

The principles aim to encourage more environmentally friendly behaviour among consumers by creating more products that reward this, such as lower motor insurance premiums for those who drive hybrid cars.

It will also encourage people in areas that are at a high risk of flooding to repair their homes in a more flood resilient way, such as by putting in concrete rather than wooden floors.

The Association of British Insurers (ABI), which is launching the principles at a conference on climate change, said taking measures such as these would enable insurers to continue making insurance more widely available in high risk areas.

Firms will also be incorporating climate change issues into their own investment strategies, encouraging the companies they invest in to adopt climate friendly behaviour and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions.

Insurance companies invest the premiums they receive into equities, giving them considerable financial muscle, with them currently holding just under a fifth of all investments in the London Stock Exchange.

Insurers will also be taking the lead in analysing the risk of climate change, looking at everything from the increased chance of severe flooding, to the possibility that severe droughts in the south of the country could lead to more deaths.

The industry will also be supporting more accurate national and regional forecasting of future weather patterns as a result of climate change, with this data being used to set premium levels and assess the capital reserves insurers need to hold.

The ABI said it would be sharing its research with scientists, business, governments and non-governmental organisations, and supporting work to set and achieve national and global emissions reduction targets.

Credit card companies have increased the fees they charge people to shift balances between cards by an average of 0.5% during the past year, research showed.

Financial website MoneyExpert.com said providers now charged people who were switching balances to take advantage of introductory deals such as 0% interest an average of 2.67% of the amount being moved, up from 2.1% in September last year.

It said the increase had come since competition watchdog the Office of Fair Trading forced firms to reduce the penalty charges they levied on people who were late with repayments or breached their credit limits to £12.

The group said 160 credit cards currently gave people the option of transferring balances to them, with fees ranging from 1.75% to 3% of the amount being moved.

This means someone who was transferring an outstanding balance of £5,000 would have to pay up to £150 in fees.

The website is urging consumers to pay close attention to these transfer fees, as well as the interest rate they will be charged when they switch balances between cards.

Sean Gardner, chief executive of MoneyExpert.com, said: “Card firms have lost out since they were forced to cut so-called default charges so now customers are losing out as balance transfer fees increase.

“Analysts talk about the so-called water bed effect - cuts in one area mean increases in another area. And that has been the experience for credit card customers with new charges appearing to replace the old charges which have been cut.

“Customers should of course still switch credit cards in search of better deals and particularly if they are paying standard rates of 16.9% or so on debts. But they’ve got to remember there is a cost involved and factor that into any savings they make.”

Meanwhile online mortgage firm mform.co.uk warned that some lenders were charging consumers arrangement fees that would not be refunded even if their mortgage application was rejected.

Victoria Mortgage Funding, a specialist sub-prime mortgage lender, has called in the administrators, becoming the first UK company to fail because of the global credit crisis.

KPMG took control of the group yesterday after it was unable to secure financing to continue operating.

Victoria operated by originating loans for risky borrowers, which it would then bundle and sell on to other investors.

That model has become virtually impossible amid the meltdown in global markets as institutions once eager to buy packages of loans have now turned their back on such securities.

America’s largest lender, Countrywide, said last week that it would slash 12,000 jobs, the latest of several major US groups to be hit by the crisis. Yet Victoria is the first in the UK to run aground.

The London-based company has a book of more than 1,700 residential loans worth £300m.

It did not offer loans directly to customers, but rather though brokers and individual financial advisers. It has another 381 mortgages in process, which rival GMAC-RFC said that it will review over the next three days.

A KPMG spokesman said it was still too early to tell what the final outcome will be for Victoria.

“It is very early days yet. We have to get underneath the bonnet and find out what the situation really is,” he said.

Earlier this year, Victoria sold a loan book made up of more than 3,500 mortgages worth £500m into the debt markets. That was before the global credit crunch took hold this summer.

Spurred by a spike in defaults in America on sub-prime loans that had been granted to borrowers and then been sliced and diced into bonds sold to hedge funds and institutions, the credit markets ground to a halt as the extent of non-payments grew.

Victoria was started two years ago with the backing of Venturion Capital, a New York venture capital group.

Elderly Brits who enjoy a visit to the theatre may learn a lesson from a new performance about burglars – how to keep their home insurance premiums intact.

A musical has been developed by police in Surrey and Tandridge District Council to spread the message about keeping burglars out of people’s properties, reports the Surrey Mirror.

The performance is based on the experiences of a war veteran who experiences trauma at the hands of a distraction burglar.

Neighbourhood inspector for Tandridge Elaine Burtenshaw said: “The musical shows how easy it is to be duped.

“Although it is immensely fun to watch, it has a serious theme and I would encourage as many people as possible to reserve their free seat.”

Community safety manager for the council Hilary New suggested that older people may be more likely to fall victim to such attacks because they grew up in easier times, perhaps making them more trusting.

Elderly Bedford residents have recently been warned about the threat of distraction burglary, which could result in the need for home insurance claims.