Banks

Many leading banks, insurers and energy companies are making existing customers pay to phone them while offering free numbers to new customers, consumer group Which? has found.

The Co-op and its sister bank Smile have become the latest current account providers to announce a rise in overdraft costs.

Plans for a multi-billion pound emergency bank funding scheme to kick-start lending to households and businesses have been unveiled.

Banks will be forced to ring-fence savers' cash from their risky casino-style investment arms to protect deposits and avoid a run like that which brought down Northern Rock in 2007.

House sales have plummeted by almost 40% since the peak of the boom five years ago, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) said today.

Lenders paid out £500 million compensation in March to victims of payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling, the highest single month of redress in 2012 .

Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) has caved in to huge public and media pressure by announcing it will offer new policies to its pet insurance customers whose animals have a medical condition, after the bank originally axed cover.

HSBC has set aside an extra £290 million to pay for payment protection insurance (PPI) claims.

RBS has set aside an additional £125 million to cover payment protection insurance (PPI) claims, as the realisation of the true scale of the mis-selling scandal grows by the day.

Taxpayer-backed Lloyds Banking Group has taken an additional £375 million hit to cover payment protection insurance (PPI) claims, it revealed today.