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Money Box: A Swiss bank to start charging negative interest rates on savings

Pensions freedoms extended to annuities

19/12/2015

A Swiss bank to start charging negative interest rates on savings

BBC Radio 4 - Money Box, A Swiss bank to start charging negative interest rates on savings

Why a Swiss bank will be charging savers for holding their money from the new year.

The Swiss bank charging negative interest rates, pensions freedoms extended to annuities, TalkTalk quizzed on cyber security and the cost of the national living wage.

From the New Year a Swiss bank will become the first to start charging customers negative interest rates. The Chief Economist at the Bank of England, Andy Haldane has described the ability to impose negative interest rates on currency the "most radical and durable option" to encourage spending. But could it ever happen here?

Are the Government's plans to extend pensions freedoms to people who have bought an annuity a 'step too far'? From April 2016, the government will remove the restrictions on buying and selling existing annuities to allow pensioners to sell the income they receive for an upfront cash sum. The financial services regulator has said this presents a bigger consumer protection concern than the pensions freedoms. We discuss with former Pensions Minister Steve Webb and Billy Burrows, an independent retirement expert.

Dido Harding, Chief Executive of Talk Talk, has been in front of the Culture Select Committee this week being quizzed by MPs about cyber security, following a data breach in October. We speak to some of the listeners who contacted us at the time.

And UK businesses face more than £1bn in costs from the introduction of the National Living Wage next year, according to government advisors. Julie Abraham is from hi-fi store Richer Sounds who already pay above the new National Living Wage. She discusses with Rob Payne from Best Western Hotels who is concerned that it will change the face of the British hospitality industry.

Presenter: Paul Lewis
Producer: Alex Lewis
Editor: Andrew Smith.

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