Complex Financing

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) warns that prepaid cards and e-payment cards are not covered by the UK compensation scheme. How can this can affect customers?

The FSCS has alerted Brits that prepaid cards such as the one that airline Ryanair has recently announced its intention to launch – which will be the only payment mechanism by which customers can avoid a payment administration fee – warned that these types of cards are not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

“Those people who already have card, or are considering getting one, should be aware that they are not covered by the FSCS. This means that if the provider goes bust then cardholders will lose all of the money on their card and will not be eligible for protection,” said Mark Neale, Chief Executive of the FSCS.

These pre-paid cards work like pay-as-you-go mobile phones, allowing consumers to load the card with cash which they then use to withdraw it or make purchases. H

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Struggling too much debt can be very stressful. Remembering the details of each payment due – the amount, date, the creditor – tends to quickly demonstrate its impact on our personal and professional lives. It is not too good for our credit ratings either. Debt consolidation professionals can be vital in such situations.

Statistics indicate that the average American has about $ 9,000 in total credit card debt. Otherwise, there are home loans, car loans, student loans, medical bills and even pending utility bills. Debt consolidation is necessary for consolidating debts into a single loan offered by a professional company – often a non-profit organization.

Obviously, the main advantage is your peace of mind. Read more…

Earlier this week I ran across a story about a guy named Danny who uses a coin jar to supercharge his savings. Whenever he spends cash, he makes a point of not using his change and when he receives additional change, he collects it in a jar back at home before taking it to the bank.

Im sure weve all done this to a certain extent, but Danny managed to save $723 over a seven month period by doing this. To be fair, Danny lives in Canada, where there are no one dollar bills. Thus, he gets a lot of loonies and toonies (one and two dollar coins) in change, which help to supercharge his change jar.

Given our general distaste for dollar coins here in the States, youd have to spend an awful lot of money to pile up change at the same rate that Danny does. After all, given that their smallest bank note is currently the five dollar bill, he might get an average of $2.50 in change from a typical transaction.

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NETHERLANDS – Dutch asset manager Robeco’s heavy emphasis on growing its institutional business has paid off with nearly half of the €4.9bn inflows seen in the first half of the year coming from institutional mandates, CEO Roderick Munsters said.

This is a reversal of fortunes for the firm after it suffered €4.9bn in outflows from its institutional business the first half of last year. Officials have said they want to grow the proportion of assets managed for institutions to 60% from 50% by 2014.

Total assets at Robeco hit €149.3bn as of June 30, versus €149.6bn at the same time last year. Despite the inflows, the assets remained flat year over year because of the strong depreciation of the US dollar and drop in markets, parent company Rabobank said in an earnings release earlier this week.

In an interview with Global Pensions, Munsters said 47% of new flows in the first half of the year were institutional, versus 53% retail. He said off

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In one line, the Peter Principle can be defined as: “in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”. This means that an employee will be promoted and will continue to receive promotions till he reaches a level at which he is found to be incompetent. This means that if a company hires few people at a time, there will be a point at which its top posts will be filled with incompetent employees. This implies two things for a company – that the Peter Principle is an inevitability and that eventually the efficiency of the company drops. One can replace an incompetent employee by a more competent one, but this will again mean that he will keep getting promotions till he is rendered incompetent. Understanding the Principle An explanation for this can be derived from a child (although the Peter Principle is meant for hierarchy). Read more…