ethical futures

Happy New Year!

The interest rates available have changed little since the beginning of December and the Bank of England Base rate remains at 0.5% following a unanimous vote by the Monetary Policy Committee.

Virgin Money has now completed its £747 million acquisition of the nationalised bank, Northern Rock. This means that 75 Northern Rock branches will become Virgin Money branches. Whilst Virgin Money will acquire an additional 2,100 employees, they have announced that there will be no further compulsory redundancies during the next three years. The part of Northern Rock containing toxic loans and impaired mortgages will remain under Government ownership.

Please click on the link below for our list of suggested accounts for January 2012:

Deposit Account Rates – January 2012

The Bank of England Base Rate has stayed at 0.5% for the whole of 2011 and appears likely to remain unchanged for some time yet. It looks as though interest rates on deposit accounts may also remain fairly static into 2012. In general, changes to rates over the year have been slight.

Whilst interest rates on longer term fixed rate deposit accounts have fallen slightly during the year, variable rates and rates on accounts with a shorter fixed term have actually risen. Rates available on regular saver accounts have just started to creep up towards the end of the year and no changes have been made to rates offered to children, with the exception of the introduction of the Junior ISA.

In terms of the accounts in the ethical section, there have been few changes to variable rates over the year; however, the fixed rate offerings from the Co-operative (and Brittannia) have gradually reduced whereas those from Triodos have actually increased.

Please click on the link below for our list of suggested accounts for December:

Deposit Account Rates – December 2011