A leading comparison website’s customers were directed to savings accounts that could leave them £500 worse off than the best possible rates, according to an investigation.

Savers who compared ISA’s and bonds on the site were not offered the best rates on the market. Thousands of savers who used the website to select a savings account were misled, costing them potentially up to £500 a year in lost interest, according to a recent investigation. Channel Four’s Dispatches said that the comparison website advertised poor-value savings. 

A couple of years ago my Bank was taken over by La Caixa.  To be honest, this was one of the easiest changes I have had to deal with in Spain and therefore, in this regard I was lucky.  Especially as the previous bank took 6 months to assess a loan application I had made, to finally arrive at a negative answer. By the time I’d got that answer I’d already made 5 repayments to an obliging bank.  ‘Opeless.

We have seen many banks be swallowed up here in Spain since the crisis and I will remind you, the Spanish banking industry was seen as a fine example at the beginning of the crisis in 2008, because its purposeful structure should have prevented contagion (spreading or transfer of problems of a systemic nature).  Instead, individual institutions took the risk rather than having it spread throughout the industry and that is why some 7 years later we are still seeing takeovers of failed banking businesses. Time has dictated that maybe it wasn’t such a shining light.