I received a letter the other day from my credit card provider announcing yet another change in the terms and conditions. For “change”, of course, read “worsening”. From now on the amount I will be charged if I don’t pay off my balance in full every month will rise from 23.9% to 24.6%. Or was that 24.7% to 25.9%?
I didn’t pay much attention, as I have no more intention to rack up debts in this way than I do to stand in my garden and set fire to £50 notes. So, pausing only to wonder how anyone can get away with charging such usurious fees at a time when Bank rate is just 0.25%, the letter went straight into the recycling.
The 20m people who bank with the Lloyds group — which includes Halifax and Bank of Scotland — will get a letter next month announcing their T&Cs are changing too. For once, this seems to be a step in the right direction: the plethora of fees currently levied (which, surprise, surprise, are different at the three banks in the group) will be replaced by a single charge of 1p a day for every £7 you are overdrawn.
Lloyds is to be applauded for simplifying things in an era when confusion seems to be an integral part of most companies’ marketing strategies — and even more loudly if, as the bank claims, the change will lead to an overall fall in the amount of money it makes out of us.
Inevitably, though, as we highlight on page 13, there will be not only winners but losers too: in this case, those who until now have been able to enjoy a quick fee-free dip into the red as long as they keep within limits. They, too, will be liable to the new 1p charge.
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If you fall in that category the advice, as ever, is to look elsewhere. Good luck with your quest. As far as leisure activities are concerned, shopping around for bank accounts is never going to have the same appeal as browsing for clothes or shoes. That said, it is marginally less mind-numbing than switching your gas or electricity supplier.
Lloyds’ rivals could make the process a lot easier by simplifying their own charging structures. So over to you, Barclays, NatWest and the rest.
Equality is priceless
Congratulations to John Walker, 66, the former cavalry officer who won a landmark battle at the Supreme Court last week that will give his husband, 14 years his junior, the same pension rights as a wife would have in a heterosexual relationship.
When Money featured Walker’s case a year ago, he had just suffered a defeat at the Court of Appeal, which had dismissed his claim because it applied to the period before December 2005 when gay civil partnerships were first recognised by law.
Walker, on a pension of £90,000 from Innospec, the company where he went on to work for 23 years, was angry. In the event of his death, his husband would have received a pension of just £1,000 a year rather than the £45,000 a widow would receive.
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Now the Supreme Court has ruled in his favour, which will affect others in his situation. Pension schemes will no longer be able to limit the pension payable to a surviving member of a civil partnership or same-sex marriage to benefits built up after December 2005. Walker said he was “absolutely thrilled” by the ruling. So are we.
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