Finance Industry News

Professionals should expect an increase in their professional indemnity insurance policies, it has been advised.

Professional indemnity (PI) experts have warned that the Federation of Services Authority (FSA’s) has announced an increase in the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) compensation limit to £150,000, up from £100,000.

PI experts send out a stern warning to policy holders that premiums will be impacted negatively, despite regulator’s assuring the complete opposite.

The FSA stated that the impact to authorised professionals covered by the FOS will be minimal as there will be little number cases where the award exceeds the current limit.

Some PI experts believe that payouts and premiums will be sent soaring from an increase in awards. It ha

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One Sunday in October 2008, Alistair Darling flew back from Washington to find Britain on the brink of banking meltdown. The chancellor was told by his Treasury officials that unless a rescue plan was announced by the time the City opened for business the following morning, there was no guarantee that cashpoints would work and that cheques would be honoured. The possibility of global financial implosion concentrated minds wonderfully; bailout plans were announced that ensured disaster was averted. Co-ordinated and collective action meant there was no return to the 1930s, and within six months most countries were recovering. China’s economy is now almost a third bigger than it was at the start of 2008, while India’s has grown by almost a quarter. The US and Germany have recouped all the ground lost in the Great Recession.

That’s the good news, and it needs to be borne in mind when you read what follows.

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It turns out that the global political-economic system is about capital, after all. Capital explains what kind of system we are in; capital explains who runs it.

Switzerland, which, you might think, knows a thing or two about banking, reveals the weakness of the measures agreed elsewhere. It has unilaterally imposed far higher capital requirements on its banks, worrying that the relatively large size of the banking sector in the Swiss economy renders it especially vulnerable to banking collapse. But hang on a minute – the credit crunch and ensuing global collapse showed that the economy of the entire world, not just Switzerland, is dangerously exposed to bank failure. If Switzerland judges high capital requirements necessary, why don’t all governments?

Of course, these are not the real reasons the banks do not like tighter rules. T

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