The Daily Mail reveals Britain’s biggest building society is deploying remote bankers who will give face-to-face advice over a computer screen from hundreds of miles away.
Nationwide Building Society has put high-tech terminals in branches that will connect homebuyers with a mortgage adviser based in an office in another part of the country.
The Daily Mail reports the move is to ensure that customers who go to branches in isolated regions, and ones in busy city centres, are always able to get personal mortgage advice.
Most residential mortgage sales will be redefined as ‘advice’ under new Mortgage Market Review rules being introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority at the end of this month.
Banks and building societies are expected to come under increased strain because from 26 April anyone seeking a home loan will have to take mortgage advice from the bank and have an in-depth conversation about their finances.
Super Tuesday for EU bank regulation
Europe’s biggest financial rulemaking spree since the creation of its single market more than 20 years ago reached its finale on Tuesday, the Financial Times reports.
A slew of landmark reforms were adopted designed to make banks safer and financial markets more transparent.
The votes in the European parliament cap the bloc’s lawmaking response to a crisis that spread from the financial turmoil of 2008 to leave at one stage the very existence of the euro in doubt.
The centrepiece of the reforms was an EU-wide rule book to ensure shareholders and bondholders and not taxpayers are first in line to pay for bank rescues.
Within the banking union a common resolution system will enforce those rules – compelling eurozone states to release their grip over their domestic champions.
Chinese growth is weakest for two years
China’s economic growth slowed to 7.4 per cent in the first quarter, raising the risk of job losses and a potential impact on the global economy, the Guardian reports.
The figure from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) was down from the previous quarter’s 7.7 per cent and was less than the full-year official growth target of 7.5 per cent announced last month.
NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun said China was in the “crucial stage of structural reform”, while government efforts to get rid of outdated industrial capacity, conserve energy and protect the environment have “definitely come at a price”.
Co-op pushed to adopt softer reforms
The Co-operative Group is coming under increasing pressure to adopt a watered-down version of radical governance reforms proposed by Lord Myners, accordiny to sister newspaper the Financial Times.
A sub-committee including Ursula Lidbetter, Co-op chairman, and at least two other board members has been appointed to take forward the Lord Myners recommendations in a way that is acceptable to the Co-op’s regional board members, the newspaper claims citing sources as “people with knowledge of the plans.”
