General Finance News

Car insurance premiums could be radically reduced if the government took action to reduce spurious whiplash claims and personal injury referral fees, according to an influential panel of MPs.

The Transport Select Committee said insurers should be forced to demand more proof that claimants has suffered a whiplash injury in a car accident and not be allowed to sell on customer details to solicitors and claims management firms.

Whiplash claims currently cost the insurance industry some £2 billion a year, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI). This equates to an extra £90 being added to every driver’s annual insurance premium. The number of car passengers claiming for whiplash injuries has risen by 32% over the last three years to 570,000 annually.

There has been a 70% rise in car insurance claims in the past six years, despite a 23% fall in the number of casualties in road accidents. A g

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Nothing catches the attention of inquiring minds better than stories of doom and gloom. And for those who have been keeping a watchful eye on the ever increasing hype over how real estate social marketing will completely overtake SEO may relate to what I’m about to say

Shenanigans! That’s right, I’m totally calling their bluff. In fact, this whole movement has an eerie resemblance to the hoards of doomsday posts that I see on a continual basis whenever a new Google algorithm is launched.

So now the new theme focused around social media is that traditional keyword based search queries will at some point be obsolete. Yet when you consider the immense impact that websites like Google continue to have on our overall business, doesn’t this sound somewhat ludicrous?

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Independent advisors’ appetite for U.S. fixed income exchange-traded funds captured 54% of ETF inflows in 2011, and U.S. equity ETFs saw 33% of flows, but funds tracking international equities and commodities–and gold in particular–lost favor, says a new report released Monday by Charles Schwab.

The top 10% of registered investment advisors (RIAs) by assets under management have the bulk of their ETF assets in U.S. and international equity funds, at 62%, while smaller firms use U.S. fixed income ETFs 50% more than their larger peers, Schwab reported.

Strikingly, the report also shows that RIAs’ appetite for exchange-traded funds grew in 2011 as the overall market’s interest in ETFs declined.

RIAs held $60 billion in ETF assets at Schwab as of Nov. 30, up 5% from the end of 2010, and ETF trade volume among advisors was up 26%. This comp

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FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Banks took a huge 489 billion euros at the European Central Banks first ever offering of three-year funding on Wednesday, raising hope a credit crunch can be avoided and that the money may be used to buy Italian and Spanish bonds.

A total of 523 banks borrowed money at the tender with demand way above the 310 billion euros expected by traders polled by Reuters in the run-up to the operation.

The banks lunge for funding pushed the euro to a one-week high versus the dollar and sparked a rally in stocks.

The three-year loans are the ECBs latest bold attempt to ease the euro zones troubles. It is the most the bank has ever pumped into the financial system, topping the near 450 billion it injected with its first one-year loans back in 2009.

Its hope is that the ultra-cheap and ultra-long funding will have a range of beneficial effects, including bolstering trust in banks, easing the threat of a credit crunch and tempting banks to buy Italian and Spanish bonds, thereby calming markets and easing the currency blocs sovereign debt crisis.

“The take-up was massive … m

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The FSU is marking Safe Work Australia Week by urging finance workers to dob in bullying by calling a new hotline.

“Workplace bullying is a blight on our industry, and has no place in modern finance workplaces. It is a relic of the past that should be relegated to history,” said Finance Sector Union Acting National Secretary Chris Gambian.

“In a workplace culture that promotes short term incentives based on sales volumes, where your next pay increase or even your job security is tied to how much you can sell, and where no amount of profit is ever enough, the pressure is on. Bullying managers breed in that sort of environment, and workers are starting to push back and say enough is enough,” said Mr Gambian.

“Major finance sector employers have policies in place to curb bullying, and express corporate values such as respect and fairness that are at odds with bullying, but the FSU is still regularly receiving reports from members that bullying in in the finance sector is alive and well, and our members are suffering as a result.”

The FSU investigates hundreds of bullying cases each year. So far this

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After positive economic news and a drop in Spanish borrowing costs, major indices were up by almost 3 percent each today. The Labor Department’s jobless data came out today, and the jobless rate fell in nearly every American state. In North Carolina, it is at a 6-month-low. In corporate news, General Mills saw its earnings fall 28 percent in Q2, while ConAgra’s fell by 14.5 percent.

Word on the Street

• A 10-year note auction went much better than expected today.
• November housing starts went up by a dramatic 9.3 percent.
• The jobless rate fell to 5.7 percent in Iowa and 10 percent in North Carolina.
• Both General Mills and ConAgra saw double-digit drops in earnings in Q2.

Interesting Tidbits

• The 10 biggest losers on Wall Street in 2011.
• 11 things to never put on a resume.

Getting a dividend of over 4% from a technology company is no simple task, even as many technology leaders have decided that higher dividends can finally start to be used to reward their shareholders.  This is where Digital Realty Trust Inc. (NYSE: DLR) comes into play.

24/7 Wall St. refers to Digital Realty as “The Landlord of the Cloud and Technology.”  For months and months this was our top dividend pick for anything tied to technology.  While it is a real estate investment trust, or a REIT, the company houses many datacenters, storage farms, and technology outfits as its key tenants.  The problem is that this upside and valuation has currently diminished to the point where our internal risk-reward metrics.  We have now removed it from our top dividends portfolio and it is not a part of the 24/7 Wall St. 2012 Mod

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The Federal Reserve is reportedly developing a plan for 2012 that will increase their transparency with regard to target interest rates. Their hope is that they will provide some stability to financial markets by easing concerns about borrowing costs. If people know that the cost of borrowing will remain low for years to come, it helps ease underwriting concerns that lenders have and convinces more people to take out loans to build businesses.

The Fed is an organization that, by merely hinting at things during press conferences, can send markets rallying or tumbling, depending on the hint.

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