Toiling against a new laptop, a US keyboard, a dodgy mouse, an unreliable WIFI connection and to top it all, that beast of a new operating system, namely Windows Vista.

Why oh, oh why didn’t I wait until they released a service pack with all the bug fixes. Well the reason is those nice chaps in the local PC store didn’t give me an option of having Windows XP on my new laptop.

So the old days of installing software and working with it have been replaced by.

Install Software

Install Bug Fixes

Install Bug Fixes to the Bug Fixes

Browse the Internet for alternate solutions

Go Mad

But finally, after weeks of messing around I’ve managed to get my new laptop into a state where I can more or less update my website and blog in the same way I could on my old trusty PC.

For the second time.

ITS GOOD TO BE BACK

Several months of near daily updates and then an eerie silence.

What happened was a move overseas - to Leiden in the Netherlands to be exact. The land of Ham, Cheese, Shoarma, keeping to the right, Rembrandt, Tulips, dodgy tobacco, Canals, Van Goch, tall people and bicycles.

And talking about bicycles, and if you live in Holland it’s a National pasttime to do so, during the war the Germans flattened Rotterdam, killed hundreds of people, made hundreds of thousands homeless, invaded and what do the Dutch hold most against the Germans? Yes, you may have guessed it - the regular stealing of their bicycles by the German soldiers.

Go into any bar in the Netherlands and any visiting German will oft be asked by the Dutch elderly - “Where’s my bike?”

So how am I doing? Not too bad considering the change in life and culture. The first few weeks were spent trying to learn the lingo, the following ones realising it was a bad idea, the next few on the toilet after struggling with the change in diet and the the last few weeks have been dedicated to, at the very least, learning the Dutch written on Food packets.

And how’s the Secured Loans business? Well, its not too bad really, things have been swimming along decently and more news of that will follow.

It’s good to be back!

Although this probably won’t be too widely reported, it will mark the last chapter in the story of Britain’s alliance with America in the Second World War. The transfer of funds represents the last repayment against a loan taken out in 1946.

For most of the Second World War the US supported Britain through a Lend Lease programme. This delivered millions of dollars of military equipment, general goods and food in return for leases on British military bases around the world. Without it Britain’s war effort would almost certainly have been doomed to failure.

Shortly after VJ-Day in August 1945 the Americans suddenly and unexpectedly announced the end of the Lend-Lease system leaving Britain, who had spent 10 of the last 30 years engaged in war, in a very desperate financial situation.

Attlee’s new Labour government had won an election by promoting ambitious plans of creating a welfare state, giving free healthcare and nationalising Britain’s main industries. In September 1945 the cabinet instructed John Maynard Keynes, the economist and negotiator, to go to Washington to negotiate a $5billion ‘moral obligation’ grant, but all he returned with was a $3.75 billion loan fixed at 2% over 50 years.

The entire affair strained the relationship between Britain and the US, even more so when the Americans used the loan as a vehicle to force Attlee to make pound sterling freely convertible by 1947.

In a world crippled by war, most countries duly converted their sterling to the mighty dollar and this contributed to more years of hardship and rationing for ‘victorious’ Britain.

But thanks Uncle Sam and, on behalf of fellow Brits, we’re sorry we failed to stick to the 50-year loan term.

One recent story I find quite interesting is the problems the Financial Inclusion Taskforce is having trying to encourage mainstream lenders to offer low value loans.

The government launched an initiative in late 2004 to try and develop methods whereby the financially excluded (people on low incomes in deprived areas) could get affordable credit. At the time it pointed out that a lack of low cost and low value loans meant that the financially excluded often turned to high cost doorstep lenders and even illegal loan sharks which ultimately made their debt problems worse.

A Social Fund exists whereby the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) can give out crisis and budgeting loans and as part of the Financial Inclusion initiative the Treasury extended this by getting the DWP to administer a growth fund.

During this year the DWP began to work with the third sector (in essence non profit making credit unions) to administer the Growth Fund in deprived areas.

In December the Financial Inclusion Task Force gave an update on its work with the Growth Fund and said it was working well, but that the number of loans the fund had given out had been below its expectations.

The Task Force also said it had been exploring the extent to which mainstream lenders (such as banks and credit card providers) might move into the market for low value loans (£300-£600). It said, the response had been fairly negative, with all of the lenders approached saying that the reputation risk associated with charging a cost-reflective interest rate to the affordable credit sector is too significant (given the projected returns) for major banks to be prepared to get involved in the market, even through sub-branded subsidiaries.

To me, as the Task Force also acknowledges, it looks as though the only viable solution is to extend the number and coverage of the third sector and there will never be a mainstream solution.

On the news front, a story that caught my eye was one that in their monthly newsletter for mortgage advisors the FSA told intermediaries, who use packagers, to look at their procedures.

The FSA said it had visited nine brokers, six packagers and conducted a telephone survey with another twenty-five brokers. This exposed worrying findings into the relationship between mortgage brokers and packagers - where a number of advisers are relying entirely upon the product suggestions made by packagers without making any of their own checks.

The investigation found that approximately a quarter of brokers only sometimes checked the suitability of a product suggested by a packager for the customer. A smaller number of brokers never checked and relied entirely upon the product suggestions made by packagers.

The FSA also pointed out that that where brokers and packagers had contracts saying that it was the responsibility of the packager to give reasons why a product had been selected and if that advice was later found to be incorrect, it was the responsibility of the packager to compensate the end customer were wrong.

The FSA is warning that even if such an agreement has been drawn up, all regulatory obligations remain the responsibility of the broker and it would expect them to evidence the reasons why the product they recommended was suitable for their customer. Information provided to the broker by the packager can form part of that suitability assessment. In the case of non-compliant advice, any resulting regulatory action will be taken against the authorised broker, not the packager - even if that packager sourced the product.

With regards to giving out a Key Facts Illustrated (KFI) to customers, the FSA found that it was sometimes the broker who gave them to the customer and in other cases the packager. The FSA said regardless of who issues the KFI, it remains the responsibility of the authorised firm that is dealing directly with the customer to make sure the KFI is given to the customer at the right time.

Police officers only need to have completed six months of their probationary period to qualify and the mortgage is available to both people with existing mortgages as well as people starting on the property ladder. Advantage have also made the mortgage available to people who want to relocate.

The main difference between the standard Flexishare product and that designed for the Police Service is that on both the conventional mortgage and residential ownership loan parts of the financial arrangement there is tailored interest rates.

As with the standard Flexishare product the amount you can borrow is based on an affordability model and not income multiples.

Borrowers are asked to pay an initial 5% deposit and the applicant can then borrow between 15.1% and 80% of its value through the conventional mortgage part of the Police Service Flexishare plan.

The residential ownership loan incorporated in the product will cover between 15% and 35% of the property value and repayments for this have been set at 2.99% for the entire term of the loan.

Topping up the conventional mortgage and residential ownership loan is the equity loan funded by Advantage, which will share in any future increase or decrease in the property value - in the same proportion as the share borrowed in the residential ownership loan.

Advantage has been hammering out the terms of the new mortgage with Police Federation Mortgages. Although this name sounds like it is in some way directly connected to the Police force it is actually a Mortgage Introducer that has been approved by the Police authorities.

It seems strange that the Police Federation Mortgages website still proudly states to be part of the listed Millfield group, when that group went into receivership in June. The Money Portal PLC purchased the mortgage introducer in the same month.

Recognising the fact that there tends to be a lack of resources in small businesses, the FSA says that rather than having formalised documents etc. small firms should take a step back and look at its operations, identify areas of risk to its customers, and consider how to remove or mitigate them.

Although not updated since last year, the new section of the website contains a PDF document which outlines the FSA’s ideas on TCF for small firms.

The subjects covered include financial promotions, advice and sales process, training, accurate and timely record keeping, disputes and complaint handling, flow of information and risk assessment.

In the next few months the FSA will be conducting a telephone survey to 900 small businesses about TCF and at some stage next year will be visiting a sample of the firms who answered the survey questions. In April 2007 the FSA will publish a review on the number of companies who have or haven’t met the March deadline for implementing a TCF policy.

Paaleads is owned by moneysupermarket and is basically an Ebay style system where people in the financial world can bid for leads generated by other sites.

So in this case, people go onto the thisismoney website and log their interest, in say a mortgage, the lead is then passed to the paaleads site where it is put up for auction and the highest bidder gets the lead.

This sort of system is not unique and there are several other buying and selling networks for affiliates, but perhaps paaleads will become the largest one. The site also has a similar deal with its parent company Moneysupermarket as well as Moneyweb, Yourmortgage and Mymortgagekey.

Paaleads separates out the leads into things like Mortgage, Remortgage, Adverse and Pensions advice and also lets people just bid on leads within a particular geographic region. It also has a facility where a monthly budget of lead spend can be set up.

All very interesting, but I wonder if the users of these so-called comparison sites really know what goes on behind the scenes.

This again increases the number of listed companies dealing in IVAs and it will be interesting to see what happens to the industry in the coming months. As you may have heard, the various government bodies have said they will not regulate the market for now and this has led to a self-regulatory body being formed.

Being wary that the dramatic increase in IVAs is increasing their write offs, the banks are being very vocal about the industry and the IVA industry is ping-ponging the comments back by saying the banks should lend more responsibly in the first place.

As most of the companies involved in IVAs are pretty small fry, it is an absolute certainty that there will be some industry consolidation in the next few months.

For your interest, I’ve listed out all the LSE companies I could find dealing in IVAs and I’ve attempted to add a rough percentage of how much they say their turnover has increased in the last reporting period and also included a listing date. Some of the businesses deal purely in IVAs, whereas others complement them by dealing in things like Secured Loans. You can see from the list that nearly all of them were floated quite recently.

Debts.co.uk (DETS) - Listed May 2006 - turnover up 79.3%
Accuma Group PLC (ACG) - Listed March 2006 - turnover up 250%
Debt Free Direct (DFD) - Listed December 2002 - turnover up 91% (Interims)
Debtmatters Group (DEBT) - Listed June 2005 - 465% (Interims)
Cleardebt Group PLC (CLEA) - Listed February 2006 - difficult to establish turnover increase, but impressive month on month growth in IVAs. Cleardebt was renamed from Carrwood PLC.
Invocas Group PLC (INVO) - March 2006 - 50% increase (Interims). Deals in Protected Trust Deeds (Scottish equivilant of IVAs)
Compass Finance Group PLC to rename to the Debt Advisor Group. Recently entered IVA market through an acquisition earlier this year.

Jonathan is a licensed insolvency practitioner and has held several positions within the industry including roles at Lathams as well as Ratcliffe & Co.

Ges Ratcliffe, the Debtmatters CEO, has previous experience of working with Timmis at Ratcliffe and Co., which was a predecessor to Debtmatters.

In this mornings announcement Debmatters say, “Jonathan, who joins from his own successful Lancaster based practice, which he founded in 1999, will bring with him a portfolio of cases as well five experienced members of staff who will join Debtmatters’ Corporate and Commercial Division.”

So it appears on the face of it, Timmis must be getting more out of the deal than merely a place on the board.

Debmatters entered the Secured Loans market through its purchase of Loanmakers in June and hopes to grow the cross referral of IVAs and secured loans between the two businesses.

In another change, Elephant Loans and Mortgages, who reported yesterday, announced the appointment of Maria Giambrione as Company Secretary. Elephant say Maria will be responsible for the accounts and administrative functions of the Group.

She replaces, David Gammond, who recently worked on the IVA operating subsidiary DebtSmashers, and has handed over his executive responsibilities but will be responsible on a non-executive basis for overseeing corporate strategy and specific projects.