But with all the stigma now attached to PPI and the industry it has spawned, what should customers do if they have been mis-sold a PPI policy?

Several banks and insurance companies and building societies all across UK have duped people and mis-sold PPI policies along with credit cards, home and car loans, mortgages etc. Majority of the customers didn’t even know that they were the holder of a PPI policy.

This was indeed a big financial scandal in UK that rocked the entire world. But after a long legal battle the case was finally won by the FSA (Financial Service Authority) and FOS (Financial Ombudsman Service) and the decision of the High Court Judicial Review went in favor of the customers.

Have you been the victim of mis-sold PPI policy too? What exactly should you do to claim back your PPI compensation? Should you seek for any legal advice and move to court? You were not even told by the bank or the financial company about the PPI policy. Hence you have the right to demand for compensation from the bank or financial company.

There are numerous alternatives available when you want to claim for PPI compensation. But don’t delay it and take the action as soon as possible. You can definitely make the claim for PPI compensation by yourself. But it is an arduous task and you should be prepared for a long drawn out affair as the banks are doing whatever they can to put people off from claiming and also delaying claims by rejecting them without proper consideration, meaning that most claimants now end up turning to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) in order to recover their money.

However, there is an easier option. Using a PPI Claims Company like MisSolcPPIClaimsCo.co.uk, will take away all the time and stress involved in reclaiming PPI but they do charge upto 25% for their services.

In case your case remains pending after 8 weeks of your complaint, you can contact the FOS (Financial Ombudsman Service) that looks into the matter and if it is proved that you been mis-sold PPI policy, the bank or the financial company will be forced to pay you the compensation.

Currently, advice can be given to firms about pensions by financial companies but employers can pass on the cost to its staff which campaigners believe can result in as much as 50pc being taken off the first year’s savings.

The pension’s minister, Steve Webb, has also outlined a proposal to impose a cap fund on defined contributions pensions, the schemes where the income is dependent on returns from the stock market and the fees imposed.

Webb explained: “With millions of people taking up pensions savings for the first time under automatic enrolment, we have to give people confidence that they will get good value for money.”

The ban was followed by a six-month review on consultancy charges which found that fees could be negatively disproportionate on people who regularly move jobs and enter new schemes regularly, the review found. Webb added that “We will act promptly and vigorously later this year in the light of their findings.”

The current consultancy fee ban comes as the Department for Work and Pensions published the Pensions Bill, which also includes previously announced measures to also introduce regular reviews of the state pension age as well as bring forward the increase in state pension’s age to 67 to 2026-28.

Earlier this year the Office of Fair Trading had announced that it would be investigating workplace pensions to ensure that the market was functioning properly, fairly and costs were kept down.

One area of benefits expecting a change is disability living allowances, which are to be removed in place of Personal Independence Payment (PIP). PIP will be applicable to those of working age and will be distributed progressively throughout England starting on the 8^th of April. The change has met opposition because it means that one fifth less people will be able to claim PIP than those who claimed Disability Living Allowance. PIP is expected to have a fraud rate of 0.5% and seeks to simplify disability benefits, in spite of this a number of disability organisations have argued that the introduction of PIP is merely a way to save the government money.

A benefits cap will be brought in from the 15^th of April which will cap benefits for one adult of working age at £350 a week while two parents or a single parent will expect to have a cap at £500 a week with the number of children not being taken into account. This will mean that those affected will not be able to receive any more than this cap despite what they could earn if they received all of their benefits.

Universal credit will replace Working tax credit, Child tax credit, Income support, Income-based jobseeker’s allowance, Income-related employment support allowance and Housing benefit. It will allow 3.1 million households to receive more benefits with an average gain of £16 a month.  In contrast 2.8 million household will receive less.

Housing benefit changes will mean that families living in council houses will see their housing benefit reduced by 14% if they have one spare bedroom, families with two and over spare bedrooms will see a loss of 25% of their housing benefit.

Council Tax Benefit will be replaced by government funding to councils throughout England, Scotland and Wales for Council Tax Support Schemes. This will see an average loss of £137 per year for over 3 million families in England alone.

Benefits are set to receive an uprating cap of 1% on the 8^th of April below inflation, close to what public sector pay rises which are at 1% and will affect 4.1 million households in 2013-14 (receiving an average of £0.90 less per week) and 9.6 million households in 2014-15 and 2015-16 (receiving an average of £3 less per week).

Duties and Tax
Osborne announced changes to duties regarding consumer goods alcohol, fuel and cigarettes. Firstly, September’s fuel duty rise of 3p and April’s 3p rise in beer have been completely scrapped. Instead, beer duty will be cut by 1p. Annual inflation rise of +2% in beer duty is to end. However, ‘duty escalator’ scheme to continue to be enforced for wine, spirits and cider.
Duties on cigarettes are unchanged as of this budget, but prices will continue to rise by inflation +2%. Income tax changes were also announced. The limit at which workers begin paying their income tax is to be raised to £10,000 in 2014. This is earlier than first planned for this reform.
Osborne also revealed that that eco-friendly tax reforms would be introduced. There will be tax incentives for ultra-low-emission cars and tax allowances will be available for investment in shale gas.

Pensioners and Families
A single flat-rate pension of £144 a week is to be brought forward from 2017 to 2016. Osborne also confirmed his caps on social care costs.
There will be a 20% tax relief on childcare up to £6,000 per child as of 2015. Also, £5,000 in compensation payments will be paid out to those who lost money on Equitable Life policies purchased before 1992.

Notable closures in last year were former High street giants Jessops and Comet. Altogether a total of 7,337 shops closed and only 5585 new shops were opened.

In greater London, 1,281 new shops closed only to be replaced by 1880 shops resulting on a net closure of 101 shops.  The same patter could be seen all over the UK. In Scotland 77 stores were closed in one year and in Wales 65 shops were lost.  On average, 20 shops were shut everyday last year.  This meant 2012 was record year for high street insolvencies.

Clothes shops, computer game retailers and stationary shops also disappeared from the high street. The trend seemed for these shops to be replaced by cheap pound shops, bookmakers and payday loan outlets.

Health food shops and recruitment agencies also topped the list of high street losers. There we nearly 25% and 16% less of each type of store compared to the previous year.

Psychologist Cary Cooper of the University of Lancaster commented, “Seeing empty shops, seeing the kinds of shops that are now on the High Street, doesn’t encourage communities or families”. Professor Cooper argued that the high street had psychological and social value to Britons and that the changes seen were a threat to community cohesion.

The research by PwC also found other retailers who were still solvent opted to close retail units in favour of distributing products from internet stores.

This seems to be a good move for those still in business as “The failed chains generally shared two problems – too many stores and too little multi-channel activity”, said Mike Jervis, insolvency partner and retail specialist at PwC.

Another trend found in the data, was that local convenience stores were being frequently replaced by supermarket heavy weights like Tesco who have expanded by opening mini-marts on the high street.

The downward trend is expected to continue as people have less money and continue to spend less.

Article provided by Sai Muchenje

The Commerce Department data stated that the country’s trade gap narrowed to US$38.5-billion during the month. However, the deficit is really a small amount than analyst anticipated. Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit stated that the US economy has showed a steady recovery at the end of last year. The economic recovery is quite evident from the December data.

The Commerce Department showed an unexpected plummet in the wholesale inventories in 2012, December. As a result, it has offset some of the gains to GDP from trade. A combined analysis of the two report suggested that the Federal government may manage to revive in the fourth-quarter. Therefore, it shows that the economy contracted at a 0.1% annual rate.

Due to an unanticipated drop in exports, not enough gain in inventories, and push in the government spending on the military have led to the decline in the GDP. Barclays stated, in spite of December’s plummet in wholesale inventories, GDP increased by 0.3% in the fourth quarter. According to the trade report, this is due to the unexpected increase in the export number.

In December, the US export mounted by US$8.6-billion; thereby improved the sales number of the industrial supplies. This also helped to boost the price of non-monetary gold by US$1.2-billion.

There is an unexpected rise in the output of oil and natural gas along with a rise in the petroleum export by US$1-billion approximately.

In December, a drop in petroleum imports in the US managed to lower the purchase and helped to save US$4.6-billion. Since 1997, the import level of crude oil dropped by a huge volume in the US.

The investors in the US were extremely impressed with the Trade data, so it helped to boost the prices for US stock. In January 2013, the US as well as China both managed to show stronger exports and imports. As a result, it handled to lower the prices for U.S. government debt.

Unfortunately in 2012, the trade gap fell by 3.5% to US$540.4-billion in the US. There has been a huge loss due to the running trade deficit; therefore trade took a heavy toll on the US economy. However, improved export market helped to lower the drag on the U.S. economy, than the previous years.

In reality, the global trade deficit reduced but it grew with China during the year. The American manufacturers wanted the US to create pressure on the eminent Asians to build up the value of the currency.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, added that the Congress and the administration must take on currency manipulation. However, the US imports surpassed China and reached to a record high. Nevertheless, the America’s exports also increased in comparison to the country.

According to the report of the Commerce Department, the stocks of unsold goods at U.S. wholesalers fell by 0.1%, during the month. However, the stock price did not increase as anticipated in November. But the economists are still positive about the rise in wholesale inventories by 0.4%.

Therefore, the anticipation of Trade data about the US economic recovery in the fourth quarter may turn out to be true.

Author Bio: John is a financial writer associated with many financial forums like http://www.debtconsolidationcare.com/ He offers advice to debt stricken consumers who are struggling to come out from the trap of debt.

The U.S. Company DELL Inc. which is owned by the Billionaire CEO Michael Dell confirmed a deal for the company. Currently Micheal Dell is a 16 per cent shareholder of the company, and he is planning to make it a private company again to be owned by himself, Microsoft and Silver Lake (an American equity firm).

The move of Dell to be private is a plan to revive the company who was experiencing a downfall of sales in the global market and have received a lot of bad feedback from Wall Street. DELL Inc. which was named after its Billionaire owner and DELL’s CEO Michael Dell is one of the biggest computer companies in the world -they rank third in the U.S. from the computer providers like Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) and Lenovo.

Everywhere in the world the Personal Computer (PC) has been a commodity in government offices, banks, schools, hospitals, and in individual homes. Since the modernization in the 21st century, more and more computers are generated in countries like the United States, China, and Japan. Even though technological business is in demand, it could not guarantee a computer company like DELL to maintain its sales in the market because the competition is tough. More rivals are making their way to the business, like the giant company Apple who also develops technological gadgets that would rival HP, DELL, Lenovo, and other known brands.

The initiative of DELL’s deal to go private is one that requires the company to cut its costs and have more innovations in the products that they would offer. The said deal is not quite easy to attain and it is still yet to be approved by the shareholders. The company’s executives have also detailed to the media that even if the company would be one of the private entities, it would still continue to progress and develop their services and software that would cater for big companies. The said deal would also sum up to $24.4 billion (around £15.5billion).

When there has been a tendency to mis-sell a product, often problems later surface for the people who have done the mis-selling. There are many banks in the UK who have mis-sold their products and are now having to face the consequences and offer compensation to their clients and investors.The products notoriously well known have been mis-sold payment protection insurance, and more recently, it has emerged that interest rate swaps were mis-sold to small businesses.

Barclays, one among the most prominent banks in the UK, have been found guilty like many banks of mis-selling financial products.  Recently they have allocated the sum of one billion pounds to be able to give just compensation to their clients for mis-selling their products.They have already spent two billion pounds in the past few years in compensation for PPI claims.  The billion added to the bill is a 60/40 split to more PPI and the new interest rate swap scandal which has £400 million put aside now.

Amidst the scandal on mis-selling the banks involved including Barclay’s would explain their banking standards during an inquiry in Parliament.  Barclays cheif executive position has recently been changed to be given to Antony Jenkins, who will be announcing Barclays yearly performance next week.

The bank’s reputation should be the first thing that they have to uphold. Clients of a certain bank would lose their trust in the Banks that they have entrusted their finances to when in the long run their money couldn’t be well taken care of or has been mis-used. Some of the industries in the UK have already estimated how much money the PPI mis-selling scandal will cost, and it will sum up to almost twelve billion pounds.  This amount that is owed back to customers for mis-selling seems to just keep rising, although the banks are keen to put an end deadline in place to try and bring it all to a close.

Fares have gone up 8% and customers now face baggage fees and additional booking charges. Michael O’Leary, Chief Executive Officer of Ryanair has said the rise in fares “reflects (their) improved customer service, record punctuality and the successful roll out of … reserved seating service.”

Passengers seem to agree as Ryanair now boasts 17.3m customers – an increase of 3% in just 3 months. A survey conducted by the company in December revealed 95% of their passengers thought the airline was good value for money. 83% of passengers indicated they were pleased with their flights.

Chief Operations Officer Mr Crowley added “strong demand out of the UK, out of Germany and out of Scandinavia” had boosted Ryanair’s bottom line.

Although they are Europe’s largest budget airline, Ryanair do not have enough planes to match their ambitions. The airline’s capacity will only rise between 2 – 3% instead of the 4% they had predicted earlier.

The company have turned their attention once again to acquiring AerLingus. This would be Ryanair’s third attempt to buy their rival after they were refused permission by the European Commission last year.

“This will be the first EU airline merger which will deliver structural divestitures and multiple upfront buyers. We look forward to completing our offer for Aer Lingus subject to receiving approval from the EU competition authorities in early March”, says Mr Crowley.

Fares at Ryanair will continue to increase in the next year. The company have now forecast profits up to €540m, an increase of approximately €35m from earlier estimates.

The gap between high street retailers and consumers is widening due to the growth of the digital market, which provides greater convenience for consumers in the purchase of media by reducing time and costs. This factor has become evident with HMV in its reluctance to keep up with modern technology, resulting in lower sales figures. This has given the opportunity for other competitors such as Amazon as well as other retail outlets to take advantage of this by reducing prices for their customers.

The future of more than 4,000 HMV employees is questionable with a possibility of loss of employment, due to branches in both the UK and Ireland closing down, although nothing has been confirmed yet.

However, HMV have recently announced that they intend to continue business as usual until they have sold the company.

HMV have made a controversial decision that all gift vouchers are now void. Needless to say this has evoked anger amongst its customers, especially as some have been given as gifts. In response to this, administrators have yet to make a final decision on gift cards, as they are still reviewing it. So it is wise to wait until a final decision has been made before you discard your gift cards.

It is also worth noting that extended warranties are still valid as they are provided by Allianz Insurance, who are a third party to HMV.

Administrators are still deciding whether to make massive reductions on products as there is still an opportunity to increase profit through some stores, with nearly 50% of HMV branches that have the potential to sustain profit margins.

Conclusively, HMV may yet remain an outlet due to its longstanding reputation and marketability.