Britannia holds steady despite drop in profits

Britannia Building Society saw a drop in profits in 2007, from £130m in 2006 to £115m, but saw an increase in group assets which hit a record £36.8bn.
It announced write-offs of £1.6m from Structured Investment Vehicles but had no exposure to US sub-prime mortgages or CDOs.
The Society stated that it has remained in good shape [...]

New entrant in equity release market

Godiva Mortgages, the intermediary lending arm of Coventry Building Society, has launched into the equity release market with two lifetime mortgages.
The products will initially be available through a panel of specialist intermediary partners (Age Partnership, Equity Advice, Equity Release Solutions, Helen Brown Financial Services, Home & Capital, Key Retirement Solutions, and NHFA).
The two product types [...]

Boost for US market with easing of Fannie and Freddie limits

US regulators are to ease restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the biggest buyers of the country’s mortgages, in a move that could help boost the beleaguered housing market.
The changes would remove the limits on the amount of loans and securities the companies can own, imposed following accounting problems a few years ago.
However both [...]

Call for larger capital adequacy requirements

Sir John Gieve, the deputy governor of the Bank of England said capital adequacy requirements may need to be raised in order to smooth the economic cycle in the future.
In a speech yesterday he argued that Base Rate movement could not be relied on by the financial services sector – instead it should create larger [...]

Tough talk on Treating Customers Fairly

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) will expect firms to be as committed to Mortgages and Home Finance: Conduct of Business (MCOB) and Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) as ever, despite the distractions of current turbulence market conditions and financial pressures.
The regulator will be focussing closely on TCF and has set two important deadlines to be met by [...]

Legal action against letting agents gets landlords’ thumbs up

Landlords have welcomed the Office of Fair Trading’s (OFT) legal action against letting agent Foxton’s practice of continuing to charge landlords’ commission after a tenancy agreement has finished.
National Landlords Association (NLA), which represents almost 14,000 landlords, said it had received tonnes of letters supporting its campaign against extortionate renewal fees, including from landlords who are being [...]

Economy slows, says Government

Official Government statistics show that there was a sharp slowdown in consumer spending over the last three months of 2007.
While the economy grew by 0.6% in Q4 07 consumer spending saw a small 0.2% increase, a fraction of the 0.9% growth witnessed in Q3.
The GDP grew by 2.9% year-on-year to end of December 07.
The Chancellor [...]