18 July 2017

Associate Knowledge: Guest blog from Legal & General

Deadline to the breadline: Recent research from Legal & General reveals that UK employees could be on the breadline in just 32 days.

03 July 2017

Associate Knowledge: Guest blog from Walker Morris

Mutuals should already be familiar with individuals' rights to request copies of their personal data and may have responded to myriad requests to date, but DSARs are today increasingly being used tactically, both prior to and alongside the litigation process.

28 June 2017

This month, Vulnerability: a guide for lending - telephony, face-to-face, and online was published by the University of Bristol, the FLA, and UK Cards Association.  The BSA was represented on the research advisory group and endorses the guide.

27 June 2017

Consumer research regularly ranks the stress factor of buying a house alongside events like divorce, bankruptcy and even bereavement.

At the BSA’s recent annual conference Maria Harris, director of retail mortgages at Atom Bank described some of the ways lenders can use technology to improve the customer experience.

27 June 2017

A guest blog from BSA associate member, Huntswood

Most directors will be aware of the UK Bribery Act and what’s involved in managing the risk of anti-bribery and corruption (AB&C), but is your firm doing enough in a changeable regulatory climate?

13 June 2017

Hedge accounting is an important part of building societies’ operations.  It comes into play when dealing with financial instruments.  In short, it uses investments to minimise potential losses by taking an offsetting position in a related derivative whose value changes inversely with respect to the original investment.  The aim is not to make money but to gain protection from different risks such as interest rate risk or foreign exchange risk.

In this blog, BSA associate member, ALMIS International discusses some of the considerations which can arise when the derivative in question is cancelled.

02 June 2017

Mortgage Matters:
The tricky question of how to tax land has long vexed politicians and economists. There has long been the idea that a Land Value Tax is for the benefit of communities, but the downsides to its introduction have long deterred Governments from taking any action.

But with the housing crisis continuing to worsen, and recent reports indicating that the high cost of land is the primary driver behind the slow build out rate of developers, could politicians of all stripes start to find it more attractive?

25 May 2017

Mortgage Matters:
With the General Election in full swing, it has been good to see not just that housing has been a key area of all the main political parties' manifestos, but that they have all been thinking creatively about how to tackle the problem.

17 May 2017

Former university bandmates ex-MPC member Andrew Sentance and current BSA Chairman Dick Jenkins reunited on stage for the opening session of the BSA Annual Conference in London. They resisted breaking into song, and instead Dick invited Andrew to give his views on the outlook for the economy as the Brexit process takes place.

17 May 2017

Associate Knowledge: Guest blog from Huntswood

There are over 30 million card holders in the UK. Credit card consumers owe £61.2 billion, 2 million consumers have persistent high levels of debt and 1.6 million make systematic minimum repayments...

08 May 2017

A number of speakers at the Building Societies Annual Conference had referred to building societies having an important social role that went beyond merely providing services to consumers.

Carolyn Fairbairn, the Director-General of business body the CBI, expanded on this theme to stress the need for businesses to lead the way in defining the UK’s future in the face of current uncertainties.

28 April 2017

Streamlining systems and process to make them as efficient and effective as possible has long been a priority for any firm producing goods in a factory.

As a result, over the last 100 years’ production philosophies like Continuous Improvement (CI), 6 Sigma and Lean Production (to name but a few), have all become common terms in manufacturing.