I’m not banking on a festive treat

AT LAST, Goldman Sachs’ successful foray into the savings market with its popular Marcus account has met with a positive response from a rival. Kent Reliance, part of OneSavings Bank, has refreshed its easy access account (issue 31) so the rate it pays savers is 1.5 per cent – the same as Marcus’s.

Although the minimum balance is £1,000 as opposed to Marcus’s £1, Kent Reliance’s account can be opened – and managed – by post, in one of its branches (all ten are based in the South) or online. In contrast, Marcus is essentially an online account.

It would be nice to think that the big banks will now respond to Kent Reliance’s move by pushing up their dreadful savings rates. For the record, HSBC Flexible Saver is paying 0.15 per cent while NatWest Instant Saver (‘exclusive’ to its current account customers) pays 0.2 per cent on balances below £25,000. Lloyds also gives most of its Easy Saver customers a miserly 0.2 per cent interest.

But I am not counting on any seasonal largesse from these monoliths. Frankly, I have more chance of Father Christmas paying me a visit in the dead of night on December 24 than these banks doing right by their savers. LORD Lee of Trafford is one of the country’s select band of Isa ‘millionaires’. Over the years, he has invested shrewdly and with great success, stock picking rather than opting for investment funds. Meet him – as I have done on a couple of occasions – and you cannot help but be enthused by his love of finance and investing. Indeed, his book, ‘How To Make A Million – Slowly’ would make a good stocking filler for a loved one who fancies themselves a dab hand at do-ityourself investing.

A few days ago, Lee contacted me with some information he had received on ever popular Premium Bonds in response to questions he had raised in Parliament. The material was not particularly earth shattering. More than half a million savers now hold the maximum £50,000 of bonds while they are most popular among those aged between 45 and 54.

Yet the statistics he sent over on the amount of unclaimed Premium Bond prizes did get the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. Some 1.5 million prizes worth £60 million have remained unclaimed for at least 18 months while a third of a million worth £19.5 million have not been claimed for 15 years or more.

If you hold Premium Bonds, may I urge you to do one thing before Christmas parties and preparations overwhelm you.

Go on to the National Savings & Investments website and check whether there are any unclaimed prizes awaiting you – maybe because you have moved home recently, changed some personal details or a winning payment has got lost in the post. You might be pleasantly surprised. Visit nsandi.com/do-i-have-anyunclaimed-prizes. Fingers crossed. Let me know if you strike gold.

FINALLY, a quiet pat on the back for Foreign & Colonial, the country’s oldest investment trust.

As part of its 150th anniversary celebrations, it has linked up with City of Glasgow College to launch a competition aimed at getting the college’s 24,000 students to think about financial issues.

The students are being asked to provide ‘creative’ answers (in the form of an essay or video) to one of three key financial questions. Why do we need to save? How do we prepare ourselves financially for the future? And, if you could buy one thing now to save for the future, what would it be?

Although there will be prizes for the winners (and their faculty), the trust’s chairman Simon Fraser says the main goal is to get youngsters to start thinking more about money issues. If the competition proves popular, it may extend it to other colleges.

This newspaper believes passionately in financial education. We need more companies to follow F&C’s lead.