The paranoia of banks failing has died down somewhat since the depths of the recession, when savers up and down the country were busy making sure that they didn’t have more than £50,000 in one bank.

By doing this, they were ensuring that they would receive their full savings back from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

However, there was a catch. Not all banks were treated as seperate entities. For example, did you know that The AA, Bank of Scotland, Birmingham Midshires, Halifax, IF and Saga all share the same banking licence? So if you had more than £50,000 in any mix of these banks, you’d only be covered for the first £50,000 (doubled to £100,000 for joint accounts).

With the number of mergers and acquisitions in the banking industry, it’s a little difficult to keep track of which banks share a licence. So for those who are still worried about spreading their savings in the safest way, the Guardian has a useful tool for finding out. Just hover over the bank you’re interested in, and it will show which other banks are under the same licence.

Now get moving that cash around!

Are Your Savings Safe? Banks That Share Licences was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

CompareTheMarket.com

In the case of CompareTheMarket.com, using just a surname, email address and date of birth – information that is pretty easy to gather – you can get access to a users entire quote history, and probably more worryingly, several items of personal data:

This was enough to unlock a veritable treasure chest of further valuable data including telephone numbers, car registration and make details, occupation, personal details of spouse as well as property details where house insurance quotes were available.

Confused.com

There was a similar problem with Confused.com. Whilst they did need a postcode, as well as the same details required to get into a CompareTheMarket.com account, armed with this info they were then able to reset the account-holder password and then access the quote history of the user.

The comparison sites are probably hoping to make it easier for visitors to return to their quotes without having to remember login details, but in this day and age, only asking for publicly available information is not a sufficient security measure.

Although CompareTheMarket.com have yet to respond to PC Pro’s concerns, Confused.com have stated that they are to upgrade the security for their customers, although no changes have been made to either site yet.

It’s not clear whether you can login to your account on either site to close it down and prevent others accessing your data, or how long you accounts are kept valid for. These are 2 other areas that could do with clearing up.

Comparison Site Security Questioned was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

MoneySavingExpert.com reports on the results of a Consumer Intelligence survey that suggests that 41% of cashback site users haven’t been paid for their transactions.

Even after complaining to the cashback site, 37% still didn’t receive any money back.

The problem can probably be put down to transaction tracking issues.

Cookies

Many cashback sites rely on cookies. These are small files that sit on your PC and can help websites to by storing small bits of data about you. In this case they let the retailer know where you visited from, allowing them to attribute the eventual sale to the cashback site the visitor came from and to track visitors through to completion (for example, buying an item).

However, cookies can be deleted by security-conscious visitors, they can get overwritten in some cases, they also expire or may never get onto the visitors computer in the first place (your web browser might be set to reject all cookies), and all of these could affect the attribution of the sale to your account.

To ensure your cashback deals go as smooth as possible, you should check how your web browser handles cookies, and it’s always best to try to complete your cashback-giving transaction in a single visit, rather than starting it one day and completing a few days later, when your cookie may have expired, for example. If you do have to stop a transaction halfway through and come back at a later date, starting the whole transaction from scratch might be the best option.

Most cashback sites will have their own instructions on ensuring you get attributed the right cash, so it’s best to have a read and make sure you follow them.

If you do think you’re missing out on some cashback, get in touch with the site – they should have a form allowing you to query a missing cashback.

It’s worth bearing in mind that tracking can sometimes take some time to catchup with your cashback site account, so give the transaction some time to appear before complaining to the cashback site.

There may also be a minimum payout amount that you have to reach before you actually get the money paid back to you, and again there could be a delay between the cashback appearing in your cashback site account and actually being able to get the money into your bank account. The cashback sites can potentially make a nice extra profit by holding on the cash they’ve been paid by retailers before paying out to their visitors (well, they can if they can find a decent interest rate from somewhere), so they like to have these delays to earn extra interest.

Terms and conditions vary between most cashback sites, so make sure you’re aware of all the small print before signing up.

As Archna Luthra of MoneySavingExpert.com points out, cashback should be seen as an added bonus, rather as a decision for buying the product, and do not count the cash as yours until it’s in your bank account. Things can and do go wrong.

photo credit: lusobrandane

Use Cashback Sites? Don’t Bank On Getting Paid was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

From GoBankingRates.com, via RobinGood.

How Does Identity Fraud Work? was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

The markets don’t stop when you leave your desk, so we’re bringing the markets to you. Our new design gives you a unified experience across desktop and Android or iPhone phones, offering nearly all the same features and functionality on both. You can easily access the new site when you do a Google search for stock tickers or company names on your mobile device, or when you tap the “Finance” tab on the Google mobile homepage.

Google Finance allows you to track the rise and fall of your stocks and shares as well as offering the latest market news and information about companies listed on the various stockmarkets around the world.

The mobile site does do a good job of presenting similar content to the desktop site, although the cool interactive charts available in the desktop site are sadly missing, replaced with simple graphs. The biggest improvement is the layout, now giving all of the information in one column, which is far easier to navigate than when trying to use the desktop version on a mobile previously.

iPhone Screenshots

Here’s the Google Finance homepage on the iPhone:

The market summary shows the latest prices and movements for the major UK markets:

And if you click the market (or it could be an equity or unit trust fund) you’re interested in, you’ll be shown more detailed information on the item in question:

Android App

As well as the new changes to the Google Finance website, there’s also an Android app available in the Android market, although there’s currently no sign of the equivalent iPhone app.

Google Finance Goes Mobile was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Finextra revealed the results of a Fiserv survey (full press release here) which suggests that Americans prefer to access personal finance management (PFM) tools through banking sites.

Security is given as the reason for this, outweighing the possible advantages offered by third-party account aggregation tools such as Mint in the US, or Money Dashboard in the UK.

The poll of 3000 online banking users shows strong interest in PFM tools for tracking and analysing spending, with nearly 40% of respondents saying they would help manage finances. However, only 15% of respondents had used a PFM service in the previous 90 days. Of those, 68% did so from online banking sites, more than double the percentage that reported using the “top named” traditional PFM software or the “top-ranked” third party Web site.

Trust

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the results of a Yodlee survey which suggested that there was a strong demand for PFM tools in the UK – I made the point in that post that the key to the take up of these tools will be trust. The masses do not appear to be ready to handover account login details to third-parties who they may not have heard of before – which should be viewed as an opportunity by the banks.

It’s worth mentioning that a couple of big financial institutions, Egg and First Direct, have had some success with their aggregation tools (running from as far back as 2001 and 2004 respectively).

photo credit: Rafa.Garcés

US Users Prefer Bank PFM Tools. UK Users Too? was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

The data is taken from the Insolvency Service of England & Wales, and presented in an interactive chart courtesy of Google Docs

By selecting your own district you can see how insolvencies have generally grown between 2000 and 2009. It looks like it was a bad period for Brummies.

Insolvency Statistics Visualised was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

BankSimple have recently updated their website, with the homepage now showing a few sneak peeks at how their service is going to look.

In the first screenshot (which is clearly of an iPad app), Banksimple display a “safe to spend balance” -suggesting that future transactions are taken into account in your balance. There are also goals – are these seperate pots of money that you can attribute a goal to?

In the second screenshot, you get a flavour of how BankSimple propose to achieve a high level of customer service , with a real-time typed chat with one of their customer service advisers. How many current banks offer this sort of service? You can also see a list of recurring bills, with the time until it next gets paid shown.

In the final screenshot, we go back to BankSimple’s login process, where customers will have to enter a randomly generated code shown on their iPhone (or Android phone, we presume). Although some banks already send out random number generators to their clients, it seems more sensible to build this part of the process into an existing item of technology- one that’s less likely to be lost and is more cost-effective for the bank.

You can see that the design style BankSimple use is very different to current banks, with a far more modern and functional feel.

As well as posting these teaser screenshots, BankSimple have also slightly changed their logo, moving from red and grey to blue and grey. Red can be sometimes signify danger, which might be a reason to change to a more corporate blue. Remember, with a new bank, trust is a very important feature – if something as small as a logo can help instil more trust, then why not change now, whilst the company is still very much in development.

First Sneak Peek At BankSimple was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

There’s nothing like a good insurance claim story (you know the sort, usually involving silly car accidents), and add an iPhone to the mix and you’ve got the makings of an explosive insurance PR story.

That’s exactly what online insurance provider Protect Your Bubble have done with their latest press release, lifting the lid on some of the bizarre claims they’ve had from iPhone owners. We’ve fallen hook line and sinker for it to bring you the top ten bizarre iPhone insurance claims:

1. I dropped it from a hot air balloon
2. I lost it while sky diving
3. It broke when my son used it as a table tennis racket
4. I lost it while building a sand castle for the kids
5. I accidentally buried it in the garden
6. It fell into the kettle
7. I dropped it in a food blender
8. My dog chewed it to pieces
9. Juice from a defrosting piece of meat leaked into it
10. It flew out of the car window

Their study also revealed that one in five iPhone users have made an insurance claim during the past 12 months. Most common claims include cracked screens, lost or stolen iPhones and iPhones dropped in the toilet or bath.

Here are the more realistic reasons that people have been claiming on their iPhone insurance, and probably the kind of problems you should try to avoid:

1. Cracked screen
2. Stolen while texting
3. Couldn’t hear the other person when making a call
4. Leaving phone on the car roof so it falls off when driving
5. Pet knocked the phone off the surface
6. Stolen from handbag
7. Internet connection completely broken
8. iPhone doesn’t charge
9. Dropped in the bath / toilet
10. Screen freezes

Because the iPhone can do so much more than just make calls, they will naturally accompany their owners pretty much anywhere, so there’s likely to be more and more of the bizarre claims.

photo credit: jronaldlee

Bizarre iPhone Insurance Claims was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Yodlee polled 500 people and found that over a third of respondents currently use three or more sites to look after their finances. Over half of those surveyed check their online account every week or more, and they do so for the convenience and control it gives them.

Most respondents would like to be able to make money management more convenient by using a single site and two thirds of these want that service provided by a trusted financial institution, like their bank.

65% Unaware PFM Tools Exist

A quarter of respondents say they would consider switching banks to get online PFM services in one place yet almost two thirds (65%) are unaware that such a product even exists.

It won’t be that surprising to see one of the biggest providers of PFM tools (Yodlee is the platform used by both Lovemoney.com online banking and MoneyDashboard; read more about Yodlee) is advocating the use of PFM tools here in the UK, but there have been some suggestions that there isn’t the appetite for these sorts of tools in the UK as there is in the US.

I would disagree. I think there is a decent size market for PFM tools out there, but the key point has been made in the research – they need to be pushed by the trusted financial institutions, which realistically means our banks (do people still trust banks?).

Regardless of the actual risks, there is still too much scepticism about handing over account details to a third party, especially when they’re essentially based outside the UK as in the case of Yodlee, and when they have some scary looking terms & conditions.

“Strong Demand” For PFM Tools In The UK was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.