This is our first weekly personal finance news roundup, for the week ending Friday 6th June 2014.
It is our weekly summary of the most important personal finance news to take place during the past seven days, condensed into a handy roundup for our website visitors and ezine subscribers.
-Neil Woodford’s new equity income fund, CF Woodford Equity Income, opened for new investments on Monday. Here is why we believe investors should think twice before investing.
-The amount you can save in National Savings & Investments Premium Bonds has been increased from £30,000 to £40,000. In addition, starting with the August draw, investors will stand a (albeit very slim) chance of winning one of two £1m jackpot prizes each month.
-A new survey by the British Retail Consortium found that shoppers are using less cash to buy goods than ever before. The use of cash for shopping has fallen by 14% over the past five years, driven lower by the growing popularity of online sales, debit cards and contactless payment technology.
–The European Commission has urged George Osborne to rein in the Help to Buy scheme, in order to stop house prices getting out of control. The latest official house price figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed property values had increased by 8% in the UK in the year to the end of March.
-Discretionary fund managers are failing their customers by adopting opaque and expensive charging structures, according to a new report for Skandia by consultancy firm The Lang Cat. According to the report, DFMs have largely escaped the downwards price pressure experienced by the rest of the financial services sector.
-A new survey by Which? has found the overwhelming majority of direct self investment platforms are failing to meet client needs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those platforms offered by banks and building society were judged to be the worst performers.
-Some bank customers who received compensation payments for mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), may have been underpaid by their banks. The BBC reported that these underpayments could total as much as £1bn.
-The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published the results of its annual health check of the UK economy, concluding it has “rebounded strongly and growth is becoming more balanced” with economic growth expected to “remain strong this year.” They also warned the UK government to enact policy measures to avoid a housing bubble.
-New jobs data in the US came in slightly below expectations, with employers adding 217,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate remaining static at 6.3%. This was the fourth consecutive month of positive jobs data in the US, a key indicator which tends to influence market sentiment.
