Ludicrously low savings rate is a joke

Sir, – Banks originally had the function of holding money on behalf of people and communities so that that money could be lent out to develop the expansion of businesses.

Banks therefore both make money and sometimes lose it as clients’ companies fail.

Building societies originated to assist those without the necessary ‘ready finance’ to purchase a house, or to buy a better home than the one they currently had.

Those societies therefore did not experience the risk factors that banks had to face and could adjust their borrowing rates accordingly.

Why, therefore, are the rates for savers with building societies so appallingly low?

The building society to

which I have belonged for about 50 years pays 10 pence for every year I deposit £1,000 with them!

They informed me of this in a four-page letter that was sent by post – all of which must have cost them about £2, which is twenty times more than the annual interest I might expect.

Currently, for example, the chairman of the Yorkshire Building Society takes home £1,152,000 and, while the Skipton Building Society chairman did not take his usual bonus, he still took home £646.000.

Surely it is about time that some government group looked seriously into the fact that savers, lending £1,000 to a building society, are receiving only 10 pence per annum as a recompense.

Who’s going to save for that kind of reward?

Archibald A Lawrie. Church Wynd, Kingskettle.