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  • Mortgage overpayments encouraged by Lloyds

  • 16th March 2010
  • Lloyds Banking Group is encouraging its borrowers to pay off their mortgages early. Customers on variable rate deals can, for one year, overpay their mortgages by up to 20% of their loans.Ultra-low interest rates mean UK households have saved about £...

  • US bank regulation bill due to be unveiled

  • 16th March 2010
  • A new bill to tighten regulation of US banks is due to be unveiled on Monday, but it is unclear if it will succeed in gaining Senate support. The legislation is being presented by Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committ...

  • Bank of England's time-out for quantitative easing plan

  • 08th February 2010
  • The Bank of England has decided against further quantitative easing (QE), the policy designed to stimulate growth in the UK economy. Under QE, the Bank has pumped new money into the economy by buying assets such as government bonds, as a way to boost lend...

  • Obama tells US banks to lend more and not oppose reform

  • 15th December 2009
  • US President Barack Obama has told bankers to increase loans to small and medium-size businesses. The president was speaking after a meeting - which he described as "candid" - with executives of some of America's top banks.President Obama said U...

  • Bank split over stimulus package

  • 20th November 2009
  • Bank of England rate-setters were split three ways about the decision taken earlier this month to pump £25bn more into the economy, meeting notes show. Seven of the nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted for the £25bn extens...

  • 'Too big to fail' US banking law

  • 20th November 2009
  • A key US House of Representatives committee has voted to give the government the power to take apart banks that are "too big to fail". The bill would give a proposed new council of regulators the right to dismantle firms whose scale could hurt t...

  • Power failure hits HBOS customers

  • 17th November 2009
  • Halifax customers have been hit by a power failure affecting all branches, cash machines and online banking. The bank said an external power disruption at an IT centre in Yorkshire caused problems to a range of Halifax and Bank of Scotland (HBOS) services...

  • Warning for online money mules

  • 17th November 2009
  • Police chiefs are urging people looking for work during the recession to be alert to online scams that trick them into laundering money. The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) says websites are currently being used to recruit "money mules".Th...

  • BOE: 'interest rates may rise'

  • 13th November 2009
  • Interest rates may be increased next year and quantitive easing (QE) could be removed, according to Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England.The Bank of England's Inflation Report predicted that Britain will recover faster than anticipated from th...

  • UK recovery 'only just starting'

  • 13th November 2009
  • The UK economy has "only just started" along its road to economic recovery, according to Bank of England governor Mervyn King. In its latest inflation report, the Bank indicated it would be late 2011 before the UK economy recovered to the level ...

  • Irish pass bad bank rescue plan

  • 13th November 2009
  • The Irish parliament has approved legislation to establish a "bad" bank to absorb problem loans in the country's troubled banking sector. The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) will have 54bn euros ($80bn; £49bn) to buy bad loans from...

  • Lloyds announces 5,000 job cuts

  • 12th November 2009
  • Lloyds Banking Group is to cut 5,000 more jobs by the end of next year as it continues to reduce overlap following its merger with HBOS last year. Some of these cuts are temporary staff, but Lloyds said 2,600 permanent jobs would be lost in the UK.Most of...

  • Tougher scrutiny for home loans

  • 19th October 2009
  • Borrowers face a mortgage affordability test from lenders amid plans by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to step up the regulation of home loans.Self-certification mortgages will be banned under the proposals with lenders required to verify borrower...

  • Bank says banking crisis easing

  • 26th June 2009
  • The Bank of England says conditions in the financial system are easing, although the banking system is fragile and vulnerable to disruption.In its Financial Stability Report, it said the total losses from the financial crisis reached $15tn (£10tn).H...

  • Chancellor sets RBS bonus limits

  • 17th February 2009
  • Chancellor Alistair Darling has announced that the government is limiting bonuses paid out to staff by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)."We want to see a cultural change where short-term bonuses are replaced with incentives for the long term," h...

  • Lloyds shares tumble after update

  • 14th February 2009
  • Shares in Lloyds Banking Group, the company formed after its merger with HBOS, have tumbled after it said HBOS losses would be worse than expected.Lloyds announced that it expected HBOS to report a pre-tax loss for the whole of 2008 of £10bn, which ...

  • RBS planning up to 2,300 job cuts

  • 10th February 2009
  • Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has said it will cut up to 2,300 jobs as it restructures the business.The jobs will be lost from its back office operations across the UK.RBS said it hoped to keep compulsory redundancies "to a minimum", and said tha...

  • Brown 'very angry' about bonuses

  • 10th February 2009
  • Prime Minister Gordon Brown is "very angry" about proposed bank bonuses and wants bankers to consider waiving their right to them, his spokesman has said.He said executives should "consider whether they actually receive" bonuses even i...

  • Former banking bosses say 'sorry'

  • 10th February 2009
  • The former bosses of the two biggest UK casualties of the banking crisis have apologised "profoundly and unreservedly" for their banks' failure.Former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin told MPs on the Treasury Committee he ...