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How to Secure Your Savings (Part 2)

What does 'financial institution' exactly refer to? There is no cut-and-dry answer. For many years, banks have been absorbed by others or merged with other banks, making the definition hard to delineate. It all depends on the technical nature of the company's personality as it is registered at the FCA. Some difficulties, therefore, arise – for instance: If you save money in the Bank of Scotland, Halifax and BM Savings, which belong to one group, the covered amount is also considered as one. Hence, you get only £85,000. If you save money in the Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster and NatWest, which all belong to the giant RBS conglomerate; you get £85,000 protection for every one of three banks where you have put money. Which banks are linked? You may visit websites to help you find out if your bank shares its savings protection. Or you may check the FCA registration number on your bank's website. If the institution is not among those listed, it d

How to Secure Your Savings (Part 1)

The collapse of Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, and Icelandic banks caused a lot of panic several years back, leading people to wonder whether their savings are safe at all. What steps can we take to secure our savings from such a terrifying and real threat? We will provide a detailed safety checklist as well as what safeguards you can apply in case of averse economic scenarios. The essential facts you need to know At least 6 facts will let you prepare for worst-case scenarios, namely: · Increased protection limit. At present, your savings now gets £85,000 protection based on UK-regulated financial institution instead of the former £75,000 only Every UK-regulated savings and current account as well as cash ISAs in banks, credit unions and building societies are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). From £75,000, the cover was raised to £85,000 on 30 January 2017 after the pound's post-Brexit fall led to a review by

Evaluating Your Investment Returns

According to David Fabian, “A vital part of Investment success depends upon one’s ability to compare historical returns with an index or benchmark. Doing so will let you measure if your approach meets the performance expectations or evaluate the efficiency of somebody else’s recommendation prior to hiring them. Although is may be very common in the entire industry, many investors still make knee-jerk conclusions based on unreliable or biased information. Two primary conditions that must be satisfied when determining the viability of any investment approach are discussed below: A proper standard of evaluation We now lay down the reasons why these concepts are essential to your decision process. Let us talk about time. In reality, time is a commodity that has lost its overarching value in the fast-evolving dynamics of our daily existence. People so often fall prey to the temptation of immediate gratification provided by modern technology that they totally ove

Why value investing could be the riskiest investment strategy

For many years, value investing has grown to become a very popular and profitable investment strategy. Among those who consider value investing as a viable choice are Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett – two of the most successful value investors with spectacular gains over a long period of time. The expected returns from value investing are comparatively high, although the risks are oftentimes much higher than most investors can handle. This is because value investing can result in an investor being subject to value traps, which occurs when a stock’s price is low for a very valid reason. What are value traps? Value traps Surprisingly, value traps are more common than most investors realize. In spite of global share prices having increased from the beginning of the year, many other shares will still actively trade at significantly low prices in comparison to the broader index. Although some might catch up and recover, others will not. Nevertheless, low-priced share