Those of you who had stashed your cash in now defunct Icelandic savings brand Icesave have some good news at last.
That is because you should have your cash back by the end of the month.
The Treasury has said that all savers with Icesave will receive their money back in full. This is over and above compensation limit of £50,000 set by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS)
It’s fair to say that a good portion of the 200,000 of you saving with Icesave doubt that the refund process will happen quickly.
The FSCS, who is handling the compensation payments, said it would start contacting all of you by email this week, saying you would get your money back by the end of this month via an accelerated electronic process.
Your Icesave savings, plus interest accrued up to October 7, will be paid directly into your bank accounts. Icesave's website has been updated twice since the bank was taken into government hands. The FSCS says it has updated its consumer website weekly.
Read the FSCS statement on Icesave here.
The Treasury has said you will be able to retain the tax-free status of their savings when they reinvest it, but as yet no details have been given about how this will work.
Yet many doubt that the process will be as straightforward as suggested. Landsbanki, the Icelandic bank that owns Icesave, was taken into the hands of the Reykjavik government last month and customers' cash has been frozen in accounts since.
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If you are an Icesave customer: you will get two e-mails from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). The first will tell you that the process for retrieving your money is being launched; the second will then give you exact details of what you should do.
An FSCS spokesman says the process for customers is as follows:
“They will be asked to go onto the existing Icesave UK website, using their existing logins. They will be given a time from when they can log in and move their money. The process will be purely online, with customers being given a month to move their cash. If they have not done this within a month there will be a paper application process, and we will contact them if they haven't logged on to complete their payments".
All of you customers, who have about £4.5 billion between you, should receive your cash in your accounts within five days of triggering the payment.
Meanwhile over 100 UK savers with Heritable Bank, a subsidiary of Landsbanki, have started to receive their compensation payments from the FSCS.
Heritable was declared in default by the compensation scheme early last month. The majority of Heritable's retail savings accounts were bought by Dutch-owned ING Direct, but about 100 accounts were not transferred and these savers will now get back their money via the FSCS.
Meanwhile, spare a though for the 2,000 savers with Guernsey Landsbanki, who stand to lose 70% of their savings as the island does not operate a compensation scheme!
Unlike UK savers with Icesave, they have not received a Treasury guarantee that their savings will be repaid. Guernsey Landsbanki savers have created a website and plan to petition Gordon Brown to persuade him to extend the 100% guarantee to include them.
Savers with Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander, the nationalised Icelandic bank on the Isle of Man, also do not have the Government's guarantee on their cash. The bank's liquidation hearing has been postponed until later this month and savers plan to put pressure on UK and Icelandic authorities to pay back their cash. Savers can claim back the first £50,000 of their savings under an Isle of Man compensation scheme.
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