UK savers still in the dark over upcoming compensation limits
The Financial Services Compensation Scheme will raise the levels of protection it provides on consumers’ savings in under a month.
Despite this, almost 60% of UK citizens are unaware of the upcoming changes, as suggested by comparison giant moneysupermarket.com and its most recent report, even though 52.2% are aware of current compensation limits, but were unaware they were changing. Encouragingly however, just 6% are not aware of the current levels of protection available, showing how attitudes of consumers have changed for the better over time.
At present, the FSCS offers lower levels of compensation in Europe with just the first £50,000, or £100,000 for joint savours, guaranteed to be protected in the event that a bank collapses. From the 1st of January, UK savers will start receiving protection reflective with other depositor schemes around the continent, (€100,000) which will stay fixed at £85,000 until 2015 with those with joint accounts needing to have £170,000.
During the banking crisis, the amount of protection savers need to be entitled to protecting became a huge issue as thousands across the UK lost huge savings. For those savers and many others, this news should come as a great boost and will increase consumer confidence throughout the continent and not just in Britain, as was suggested by moneysupermarket’s head of banking, Kevin Mountford.
As well as his, Mountford also advised consumers with more than £50,000 saved to spread their money between accounts and try not to use two or more products from the same banks.