SMEs show increasing demand for alternative finance as high street banks disappoint May 31, 2016 Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are showing increased frustration with high street banks, a new survey suggests. Some 16 per cent of 400 SME business owners seeking finance said they had been turned down by a mainstream lender, up from 11 per cent in 2015. And 31 per cent said their inability to secure finance [...]
JP Morgan Cazenove loses its long-standing lead over Bank of America Merrill Lynch in FTSE 100 stockbroking stakes May 31, 2016 JP Morgan Cazenove has lost its long-held position as the top stockbroker for FTSE 100 companies. The bank's crown has been taken by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, new figures from Adviser Rankings show. JP Morgan Cazenove has topped the FTSE 100 rankings every year since Adviser Rankings began compiling the list as part of its [...]
Why the City of London will be better off if we leave the European Union May 31, 2016 Too much of the debate about what the European Union referendum means for the City has been frustratingly narrow and short-term, confined to the immediate financial implications of leaving. Far too little attention has been paid to the longer-term health of the City, in particular the implications of remaining inside the EU. Inside the EU, [...]
For sale: 10pc of the UK’s consumer credit card market, as BAML seeks to offload MBNA May 27, 2016 Just over 10 per cent of the UK's consumer credit card market could be about to go up for sale, after it emerged Bank of America (BAML) is finally planning offload its European credit card arm. City A.M. understands BAML has begun courting interest for MBNA, the credit card provider best known for its partnerships with football clubs [...]
Santander’s using blockchain right now May 26, 2016 Santander is the latest bank to experiment with blockchain technology, applying it to international payments with the promise of making the process quicker. It claims to be the first bank in the UK to use blockchain in this way, trialling it in an iPhone app used by staff that reduces the time it takes to transfer cash by [...]
Ex-Barclays boss Rich Ricci: Fintech will eat banks’ lunch May 26, 2016 Rich Ricci, the former head of Barclays investment banking and right-hand man of Bob Diamond, has warned that fintech startups will snatch market share from established financial institutions and change the landscape of banking. Efforts of big banks to innovate will continue to be thwarted by their archaic technology as they face increasing competition from [...]
PPI still tops the list of most complained about financial products May 26, 2016 Consumers are still feeling the effects of one of banking's biggest scandals, with complaints about Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) still topping the list of woes heard by the Financial Ombudsman Service. A report released today by the Ombudsman revealed that it is still receiving up to 4,000 PPI cases each week and that half of all the [...]
HSBC to appoint new boardroom pay chief as current chair Sam Laidlaw set to quit May 25, 2016 HSBC is set to appoint a new boss for its boardroom pay committee as current chair Sam Laidlaw is set to step down from the bank's board as early as next year. Laidlaw, the former boss of Centrica, took over as chair of the bank's remuneration committee from former Rolls Royce chairman Sir Simon Robertson last [...]
No, P2P lenders aren’t going to topple banks – but we don’t want to May 25, 2016 Peer-to-peer lending was born a decade ago and has offered an alternative and often more accessible route to funding for thousands of small and medium sized businesses. The sector’s popularity has exploded in recent years, leading many, including a newly published report from Deloitte, to assume that platforms now have the established banking sector in [...]
Surge in buy-to-let loans dries up pipeline for lender Paragon May 24, 2016 Specialist buy-to-let mortgage lender Paragon has recorded a 84.6 per cent increase in loans in the first six months of 2016, to £823.6m. “We saw a surge in applications from people trying to beat the stamp duty hike and as a result expect the second half to be weaker than usual,” chief executive Nigel Terrington told [...]