Financial news

• Radical ideas needed to tackle insurance auto-renew pricing

  31-10-2018 20:10 via theguardian.com
  Policyholders often get lower quotes by phoning to protest, but FCA knows this farce is wrongHere’s an intriguing idea the Financial Conduct Authority probably won’t adopt: get the entire population of the UK to renew, or switch, its car and home insurance policies on the same day every year.Absurdly impractical? Almost certainly, but the proposal has been included for consideration in the FCA’s study of how to shake up the general insurance market and one can understand why. A
  
  Read more

• Harrods unveils jewel-encrusted champagne at £115,000 a pop

  31-10-2018 20:03 via theguardian.com
  The three rare bottles are adorned with a ruby, sapphire or emerald Jewel-encrusted bottles of champagne costing £115,000 have gone on sale in Harrods, at the highest prices ever charged outside of a fine wine auction.The three bottles of Piper Heidsieck prestige cuvée ‘Le Secret’ Rare are adorned with a ruby, sapphire or emerald embedded at “the heart of interwoven bands of gold set with 510 [tiny] diamonds”. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Insurance industry faces scrutiny over possible indirect racial bias

  31-10-2018 18:23 via theguardian.com
  Pricing models to be looked at as part of Financial Conduct Authority studyRegulators are to investigate the insurance industry for potential racial bias and discrimination over the data that companies use to set their prices.The Financial Conduct Authority said that while it had found no evidence of “direct discrimination”, insurers were using information within their pricing models that may implicitly or potentially explicitly relate to race or ethnicity, so there was a “risk
  
  Read more

• Ikea charged me £35 for delivery, but it wasn't there on time

  31-10-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  I paid extra to get a four-hour time slot, and now the store won’t refund meI ordered a bed from Ikea online and paid £35 for the delivery service, which offered four-hour time slots. I picked 7-11am on a Saturday. At 8am the company called to say the drivers were delayed and did not know when the item would arrive, essentially asking me to wait in all day. The bed in fact arrived at 15.30. I asked for the delivery charge to be refunded but Ikea told me that as the bed arrived on the
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• The wealth of America's three richest families grew by 6,000% since 1982 | Chuck Collins

  31-10-2018 07:00 via theguardian.com
  Three US families have a combined wealth of $348.7bn. As their generations expand, we are are drifting toward a society governed by the richIt hardly makes news any more that the US is becoming an extremely unequal country.Each year new eye-popping statistics juxtapose the reality of decades of stagnant wages for half the country’s workers with today’s extreme concentrations of wealth and power. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

Follow @financialnwsUK on Twitter!