http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk Loans - Insurance - Mortgages - Credit Cards Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:27:30 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en American Express saw first quarter profits decline 6%, after the number of cardholders failing to pay off their debts increased. Profits for the three months to 31 March fell to $991m from $1.06bn a year earlier, but beat forecasts. The firm set aside $1.27bn for credit losses during the period, representing a ... http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk/2008/04/26/amex-hit-by-credit-card-defaults/ A handful of mortgage lenders are being inundated with applications as competitive deals become increasingly rare. Mortgage comparison website mform.co.uk said up to six out of 10 applications from both home movers and people remortgaging made through its site had been to just three lenders during the past month. The group said ... http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk/2008/04/23/manic-month-for-mortgage-lenders/ The Bank of England said yesterday it will exchange about 50 billion pounds ($100 billion) of government bonds for mortgage securities, mimicking a swap of $200 billion worth of securities by the U.S. Federal Reserve last month. Brown, whose popularity fell the most on record in a newspaper poll published ... http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk/2008/04/22/boe-has-slim-chance-of-helping-loans/ The number of fresh mortgages approved for house purchase by the big UK banks remained close to a decade-low in January, industry figures revealed yesterday, reinforcing economists' forecasts of significant falls in house prices this year. Figures from the British Bankers' Association showed the number of fresh home-loan approvals in January ... http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk/2008/02/27/fresh-home-loan-approvals-sink-close-to-decade-low/ Data from the Association of Payment Clearing Services (Apacs) reveal that the UK's 31.5 million credit card holders spent £32.3 billion in the last three months of 2007 - the second-highest sum on record, beaten only by the final quarter of 2004, when cheap credit card deals were more readily ... http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk/2008/02/26/uks-credit-card-bill-is-second-highest-ever/ Car insurance is costing drivers 5% more on average than a year ago, figures have shown. And it is motorists aged 40-50 who have endured the biggest increases, statistics from Sainsbury Car Insurance found. While the average insurance premium has gone up 5.24% in the last 12 months, the average rise for ... http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk/2008/02/25/car-insurance-costs-rise-5/ Forget worming pills and a flea collar - a trip to the vet in Britain these days could be about heart surgery, joint replacement, chemotherapy or a host of other cutting-edge procedures. Britain is one of the few countries in Europe to offer many of these complex treatments: devoted British pet-owners ... http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk/2008/02/21/uk-pet-owners-doggedly-devoted/ U.K. house prices rose in February for the first time in four months after two interest-rate cuts by the Bank of England encouraged sellers to demand more for their homes, Rightmove Plc said.The average asking price climbed 3.2 percent to 237,856 pounds ($466,000) from January, compared with a 0.8 percent ... http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk/2008/02/18/uk-rightmove-house-prices-rise-for-first-time-in-four-months/ Morgan Stanley will cut 1,000 jobs from its mortgage business and shut the UK sub-prime home loan division that it bought just over two years ago amid worsening market conditions. The American investment bank blamed a “dislocation” in mortgage markets for redundancies in the United States and Britain, which will involve ... http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk/2008/02/16/morgan-stanley-to-close-uk-sub-prime-lender/ Britons are twice as likely to have a credit card as people in any other country in Western Europe, a report shows. The average Briton had 1.4 credit cards in their wallet at the end of 2006, twice as many as second-place Norway, where people had an average of just 0.7 ... http://moneyadviceforu.co.uk/2008/02/15/britons-have-most-credit-cards/