Customers who only buy landline services from BT are set to get at least £5 a month taken off their bills under plans set out by the telecoms regulator, Ofcom. It said those customers, who are often elderly or vulnerable, were not getting value for money. BT has nearly 80% of the UK landline market, […]

Lloyds Banking Group has reported its highest annual profit in a decade, helped by a reduction in payment protection insurance (PPI) provisions. Pre-tax profits increased by 158% to £4.24bn, a level last seen in 2006 before the financial crisis. Provisions for PPI declined from £4bn to £1bn. The UK government’s stake in Lloyds has now […]

Shares in HSBC have fallen after the bank reported a steeper-than-expected fall in annual profits. It reported a $7.1bn (£5.7bn) pre-tax profit for 2016, down 62% on the $18.9bn reported a year earlier. HSBC attributed the fall to a string of one-off charges, including the sale of its operations in Brazil. HSBC said its performance […]

Nearly a third of the population of Britain is living on an “inadequate” income, according to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). In 2014-15, it said that 19 million people were living on less than the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). It said the problem was that household costs have been rising, while incomes have […]

Typical pensioner incomes now outstrip those of working-age people, a report from the Resolution Foundation says. Pensioners are also now more likely than their predecessors to still be in work, own a home and have access to generous private pensions, it adds. The think tank says growth in pensioner incomes has been coupled with weak […]

Tax changes will mean landlords may reduce the properties they have on their books, leading to sharp rent rises, surveyors suggest. Rental prices could rise faster than house prices over the next five years, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). This would be the result of more tenants chasing fewer rental properties, […]

Thousands more families who were wrongly stripped of their tax credits by the US contractor Concentrix are to have their cases reviewed. A committee of MPs that produced a scathing report on Concentrix said on Monday that HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) had accepted its recommendations. Concentrix was sacked by HMRC last year after many […]