Financial news

• Director of QuickQuid owner kept watchdog role as lender hit rocks

  30-10-2019 18:14 via theguardian.com
  Nick Lord still sitting on FCA committee after loan firm enters administration
  A former director of QuickQuid’s owner continued to sit on an influential committee at the City regulator as the payday lender headed for administration amid mounting claims for compensation from customers sold-high interest loans.Nick Lord joined the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulatory decisions committee (RDC) in 2017, two years after he became a non-executive director of CashEuroNet UK, whose best-
  
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• Personal insolvency levels approaching highest in a decade

  30-10-2019 14:04
  Company insolvencies increase for third consecutive quarter to 4,355 to end of SeptemberThe number of people facing insolvency is on course to reach the highest level for almost a decade in 2019 after an annual increase of more than 22% in September.Revealing the devastating toll of mounting debts on British households, official figures showed the number of personal insolvencies climbed to 30,879 in the three months to the end of September, up from 25,169 in the same period last year. Continue r
  
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• How Fairphone's social mission created gender balance... without really trying

  30-10-2019 11:03
  Unlike most tech companies, Fairphone has a workforce with an almost equal gender split, and a majority of women in leadership. So is its ethical mission the secret to achieving parity?Eva Gouwens had heard that the tech industry was male-dominated, but it wasn’t until she attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for the first time that the extent of the gender imbalance really hit her.
  “I hadn’t really noticed it as an issue until I saw the line for the toilets,”
  
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• Standard Life Aberdeen to offer nine months of full pay for new parents

  30-10-2019 10:00
  Investment group’s new policy is one of UK’s most generous for parental leaveInvestment group Standard Life Aberdeen is introducing one of the UK’s most generous parental leave policies, offering nine months of full pay for all new parents.The new policy, which comes into force on 1 January 2020, will apply to all new mothers and fathers working for the company, including those who adopt or have a child through a surrogate. Continue reading...
  
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• There’s no justice in this NHS prescription charge fine

  30-10-2019 07:00
  I face £500 of penalty charges after forgetting my prepayment certificate had expiredFor decades I’ve paid for my prescriptions in advance for a year online which saves me money. This year, the website refused to sell me the required annual certificate which entitles me to do so - I am soon to turn 60 and will then qualify for free prescriptions – so I had to buy the next best thing which was for three months. I planned to renew for another three months when it expired but, bei
  
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• If we’re serious about changing the world, we need a better kind of economics to do it | Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee

  30-10-2019 07:00 via theguardian.com
  The pursuit of rapid growth won’t solve the huge challenges we face. A more honest, humane approach is the answer• Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee are joint winners of the 2019 Nobel prize in economic sciencesIn 2017, a poll in the UK asked: “Whose opinion do you trust the most when they talk about their field of expertise?” Nurses came first – 84% trust them. Politicians came last. Economists were second from bottom on 25%.This trust deficit is mirrored by the fac
  
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• 'I love my job’: meet 81-year-old bar worker, June – and Britain’s other most loyal employees

  30-10-2019 07:00
  What is it like to have the same job in the same company for as long as 40 years? A tailor, school meals supervisor, bus driver and sexual health nurse tell allIn the future, the people who spend their careers doing the same job will be historical curios, the workplace equivalent of a narwhal’s tusk. We’ll look at them, and marvel at how much careers have changed.Technology has profoundly transformed the nature of the work we do. The Office for National Statistics predicts that 1.5 m
  
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