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Each credit union has its own formula for how much you can borrow

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Each credit union has its own formula for how much you can borrow. A smaller credit union may lend two or three times the amount you have saved.Because they rely largely on volunteer staff, returns on small savings balances can be much higher than commercial savings institutions give. After a certain period of regular savings, membership entitles you to borrow at a low rate of interest - 1 per cent a month, or 12.68 APR. Credit unions - a type of do-it-yourself bank - often provide the answer.Dubbed Britain's best-kept money secret by the NCC, credit unions are formed by people clubbing together to save their money. Returns on small balances are rarely more than a pittance and when it comes to borrowing, banks often refuse - leaving you to pay extortionate rates to a door-to- door lender.

"The returns on offer to poorer savers can be so bad, many would do as well stuffing their cash under a mattress or splashing out straight away," said the National Consumer Council's chairman, David Hatch, earlier this year. The extra costs in handling small amounts of money at a time put savings institutions off, and they concentrate instead on winning better-off customers, the NCC said. Climbing interest rates please savers and punish borrowers. But if you're on a low income, it may make no difference at all. I'm so glad I took that veteran stockbroker's advice all those years ago.Brian Tora is chairman of the Greig Middleton investment strategy committee and can be contacted on 0171-655 4000..

Many of the larger firms have direct links to market- makers.Dealers will still be needed to execute difficult or unusual orders It is just that not so many will be required as before. Its introduction also follows a period when an increasing amount of business is now handled by computers anyway. This is a reflection of the fact that TradePoint, the alternative market formed by former Stock Exchange employees, is now sufficiently well established to represent a real threat and is providing a much cheaper alternative.The announcement that a number of major inter-dealer brokers, which admittedly are supporting TradePoint financially, will switch electronic trading to the new exchange must have caused some disquiet in Throgmorton Street. It takes competition to bring prices down.This introduction of the electronic order book is expected to lead to much higher volumes for the London stock market, so in the end the Stock Exchange may not necessarily lose revenue by cutting charges. The Stock Exchange announced it is to lop 60 per cent off the charges it makes for allowing business to be transacted through London. On balance most practitioners consider the system can take the strain, but there was by no means universal acclaim.One effect though, has been quite dramatic. In order to ensure the system would cope with volatile markets, a day's trading was simulated whereby the FTSE 100 indexrose and fell 200 points rapidly.

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