Interest Rates Cut to 1%

The Bank of England has once again made history by dropping its Base rate to 1%.

Will it make any difference to an economy in free fall? Probably not. Again the decreases are unlikely to be passed on to borrowers or businesses

The government and the Bank of England now have stakes in most of the High Street Banks and Building Societies such as Swindon based Nationwide with a massive 60% in Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Ideally this would mean forcing institutions to start lending however the government does not appear to want to use this option.


Posted by Sean Wilson, Independent Financial Adviser, Swindon, Wiltshire.

Interest Rates cut by 0.5%

The Bank of England cut interest rates by 0.5% today. The new base rate is 1.5%, the lowest in the Bank's 315 year history

Normally this would see a reduction in rates for home owners & businesses. The question continued to be asked is "Will the banks pass it on to consumers?"

The Bank of England is also talking about printing money to lend to banks, something usually associated with countries with dire economic conditions or at war.

Interest Rate cut of 1.5%

As anticipated the Bank of England cut interest rates to 3%. The lowest in some 50 years.

Will mortgage rates come down?

That is the important question, banks and building societies have not been passing on reductions to consumers because they have been worried about their profit margins.

There are some lenders who would be able to lower rates substantially but are not doing so becasue of lack of competition in the market place.

Will savers be hit?

Yes, rates for savers will reduced much quicker than for lenders.

Bank of England "gives" banks £50 billion.

Yesterday the Bank of England announced it would give UK banks £50 billion in exchange for mortgage backed securities.

It was a move designed to put more money into the financial markets.

However it is somewhat of a u-turn for the Bank of England & its governor Mervyn King who denied it would not do anything liek this a few moths ago. The bank has basically bought assets that nobody else wanted on the financial markets.

It should be noted that the big 5 banks made profits of £30 billion in the last year despite making some rather large mistakes.

Bank of England lowers Interest Rates

The Bank of England yesterday lowered interest rates to 5%.

Will this mean lower mortgage interest rates?

Hmmm...it depends

1 Lenders had priced in the likely decrease into new tracker/discounted mortgages. it's like when supermarkets put up drink prices in November to claim a massive drop just before Christmas
2 Some organisations are not passing on the full 0.25% drop, with Nationwide you may only get a 0.12% drop.
3 Other banks are "reviewing rates within the next 2 weeks"