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Money Box: 11/02/2012

11/02/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Money Box, 11/02/2012

Quantitative easing, retirement home leases, interest-only mortgages, pet insurance.

Is quantitative easing cheating pensioners? Retirement home leases. Tightening of interest-only mortgage landing criteria. Pet insurance policy withdrawn.

Are pensioners the collateral damage in the war against recession? 

This week the Bank of England announced it will inject another 50 billion pounds into the economy to bring the total of created cash to 325 billion pounds. 

It's called Quantitative Easing. It keeps interest rates low but forces down the pension annuities and pushes up inflation. 

So is the price is paid by those relying on savings, the newly retired, and people on low incomes worth the benefits that QE is supposed to bring? 

Dr Ros Altmann, Director General of Saga and Graeme Leach, Chief economist at the Institute of Directors talk to Paul Lewis. 

Santander has this week announced much greater restrictions on who it will sell interest only mortgages to. 

More than a third of outstanding residential mortgages are currently interest only, but this form of borrowing has fallen badly out of favour with the banks in the last few years. 

So do these mortgages deserve the somewhat cavalier reputation now attached to them? 

Bob Howard reports and Paul talks to David Hollingworth, Associate Director at London and Country. 

Exit fees on leasehold retirement homes

Nearly two and half years after the Office of Fair Trading launched an enquiry into charges levied on retirement home owners it has still come to no conclusions and cannot say when it will. 

We talk to a listener whose mother died in 2010. She has had to pay more than 2,000 pounds a year for her mother's empty and unsalable flat and another 1,400 pounds if she lets it out. 

Paul Lewis talks to Melissa Briggs, Co-Founder of Carlex, the Campaign Against Retirement Leasehold Exploitation and Tish Hanifan, a Barrister and Director of Solicitors for the Elderly. 


Insurance woes for some animal lovers

Halifax says its 'life-long' pet insurance does not cover the pet for as long as it lives. It has now scrapped the product sold as "life-long cover" leaving an estimated 50,000 owners trying to reinsure pets which are now older and in some cases have become uninsurable. 

The programme hears from Deborah Moran-Sugden who thought she had 'lifelong' pet insurance cover for her Yorkshire terrier Billy who has heart problems. 

Paul Lewis also talks to lawyer and compliance expert, Adam Samuel.

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