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Money Box: Is Citizens Advice ready for the pensions revolution? Cash savings and Lloyds bonds

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24/01/2015

Is Citizens Advice ready for the pensions revolution? Cash savings and Lloyds bonds

BBC Radio 4 - Money Box, Is Citizens Advice ready for the pensions revolution? Cash savings and Lloyds bonds

Is Citizens Advice ready for the pensions revolution? Currency jitters and Lloyds bonds.

The latest news from the world of personal finance, with Peter Lewis. Is Citizens Advice ready to offer pension guidance? Plus currency jitters and Lloyds bondholders.

On Money Box with Paul Lewis: Citizens Advice has given more detail about how it will offer everyone aged 55 or more face-to-face advice about the new freedoms
which begins on 6 April. It says 44 out of its 316 offices in England and Wales will offer Pension Wise guidance with around five members of staff in each office. It is currently recruiting those advisers. However pensions experience is not a criterion to get the job. Some pensions experts have concerns about this. Chief Executive of Citizens Advice, Gillian Guy, and pensions expert Margaret Snowden join the programme.

From the summer, banks may have to tell us what rate our savings are earning, on statements and online. That is one of the proposals from the Financial Conduct Authority to help persuade people to move some of the £160 billion languishing in accounts paying 0.5% or less into better paying accounts. Chris Woolard speaks to the programme.

First it was the Swiss central bank de-linking its franc from the Euro that sent the single currency plunging. Now the European Central Bank itself has added to the Euro's woes by promising to magic up €1 trillion to embark on eighteen months of Quantitative Easing to stimulate the Eurozone economies as inflation goes negative and growth stalls. The managing director of Currency Index,
Robin Haynes, will explain the personal finance implications of the currency turmoil.

Is Lloyds' word its bond? That's what thousands of investors who have been getting returns of up to 12.5% a year from long-standing investments in bonds from Lloyds are asking. The bank has now said it will end the interest payments and buy back the bonds at their face value. It insists it is entitled to do that under its terms and conditions in the original bond sale prospectus. But many investors say that wasn't clear to them and that they rely on the income. The programme hears from bond expert Mark Taber.

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