Exclusive: Bosses tell staff cuts part of effort to ‘simplify’ operations and ‘remove duplication’ across wider workforce

Nationwide building society is slashing another 275 jobs in the latest round of cuts since bank bosses pushed through a £2.9bn takeover of Virgin Money.

Bosses made the announcement to staff on Wednesday, saying it was part of efforts to simplify the bank’s operations and “remove duplication” after absorbing thousands of staff in to the group’s wider workforce.

Exclusive: Chancellor to target sector in his first budget, to help offset Iran war’s damage to public finances

John Healey is poised to tax Britain’s banks in his 28 October budget, to help offset the damage inflicted on the public finances by war in the Middle East, the Guardian understands.

The chancellor is in Bangkok, where the International Monetary Fund has praised the UK’s progress towards balancing the books, urging him to “stay the course”.

Revelation comes amid mounting concern over online prediction market’s effects on integrity of financial system

UK authorities are being urged to intervene after it emerged that the online prediction market Polymarket has been taking thousands of dollars worth of bets over whether HSBC and Lloyds will fail.

Polymarket – the US-owned company which holds bets on anything from football matches, to the existence of aliens, to when a bomb drops on a city – has allowed users to take $77,507 (£58,530) worth of positions on whether the world’s biggest banks will go under by the end of this year.

Exclusive: FCA pressures firms to do more to sort 760,000 accounts as watchdog urges families to use free tracking service

Child trust fund providers are being put under the spotlight to check they are treating savers fairly and doing all they can to reunite young people with lost accounts.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said about 760,000 accounts worth an average of £2,000 were yet to be claimed – more than £1.5bn in total – as it launched a review of the market.

Plagued by bank impersonation scams, one Guardian Money reader got even by stringing the fraudsters along … for hours

“A couple of Sundays ago at just past 11am my mobile rang. An automated message purported to be from Barclays Bank, querying a payment to Argos for more than £1,000. Not only had I not made a payment to Argos recently, nor do I bank with Barclays.

I am plagued with these kinds of calls. Usually, when possible, I make it clear to the scammers that I know their game. Usually, that call ends there and then.

Hundreds of millions of pounds of dirty money are being deposited at post offices every year. So why are the police reluctant to investigate the scale of the problem?

• Last chance to buy the summer issue of The Long Read magazine, now with 15% off. Click here to order

Leicestershire police won’t say who first told them about Jigar Gheewala, but you can see why, once they had heard of him, they decided to find out more. Gheewala was unemployed, had no apparent income, yet lived in a £1.3m house and sent his three children to private school. “He was a declared bankrupt, with a bank account that was absolutely not reflective of what it should be,” said financial crime supervisor Laura Panter of Leicestershire police’s economic crime team. “That was our starting point.”

Over the course of 2020, despite being on benefits, Gheewala’s bank account received more than £880,000 in cash in 200 different deposits. He was, it turned out, a money launderer, but not the kind you’ll see in the movies. Gheewala’s deposits had been made not in Liechtenstein or on Grand Cayman, but at various post office branches in Leicester, one thick wodge of banknotes after another.

Victims have lost tens of thousands – and in one case £300,000 – due to fake emails from solicitor or estate agent

You are poised to move house and are awaiting the solicitor’s instructions that things are ready to go and it is time to hand over your deposit. When the email arrives giving you their bank details, you set up the transfer and move the cash. And then the solicitor calls to ask where the money is.

Conveyancing fraud involves criminals getting access to an email chain between homebuyers and their solicitors or estate agents and requesting payment to a bank account they control. Sometimes the solicitor has been hacked, but often the homebuyer has been the victim of a phishing exercise.

Fraudsters use pictures posted on Instagram or Facebook to create emails seeking bank account details

You are on a short break in Porto and post some pictures of your family on Instagram or Facebook. With a small section of the Douro river in the background, you think it could have been taken anywhere.

A few days later, you get a text saying that your card was compromised. “We detected unusual activity while you were travelling in Porto – please verify immediately,” says the message.

Whether first-time buyers, in between homes or refixing, people tell of impact of higher mortgage rates on housing

Prospects of cuts in UK interest rates in 2026, which were widely expected at the start of the year, were rapidly extinguished when the Iran war started at the end of February. The renewed threat of inflation means the Bank of England is now expected to raise rates at least once this year, with mortgage costs staying higher for longer.

The boss of Britain’s largest housebuilder said on Thursday it was the most challenging time to be a first-time buyer since the 2008 financial crisis.

Fears over a natural disaster or cyber-attack are pushing households into contingency planning, Link survey shows

Millions of Britons are “prepping” for a potential “major disruptive event” by keeping a stash of cash at home, stockpiling tinned goods or ensuring they have a battery-powered torch close to hand, new data suggests.

With war raging in the Middle East and Ukraine, extreme weather becoming more frequent, and warnings that the UK’s critical infrastructure is at risk from cyber-attacks and power outages, many people feel the world has become a more dangerous and chaotic place.

Creator card is designed for people making money through TikTok Live, some of whom complain of payment delays

TikTok and Visa have launched a debit card for content creators in the UK which they say will allow people to quickly access their earnings from the platform.

The creator card is designed for the growing numbers of people making money through TikTok Live, a livestreaming feature where creators receive virtual gifts from viewers that are later converted into cash.

Ambition behind investing campaign is laudable, yet cutting stamp duty on share purchases, for example, would be much more savvy

• City firms bank on ‘savvy’ ad campaign to push Brits towards investing

Red squirrel characters have a history in the public information game. Older UK readers may recall Tufty, who taught children about road safety in the 1970s. His chum, Willy Weasel, regularly got knocked down by passing cars but clever Tufty always remembered to look both ways.

Now comes Savvy Squirrel, who, with backing from the chancellor and a multi-year lump of advertising spend from the financial services industry, will try “to drive a step-change in how investing is understood, discussed and adopted”, as the blurb puts it. In translation: don’t squirrel everything away in a boring cash Isa but try taking an investment risk or two if you value your long-term financial health.

Banking lobby group says lenders are holding off changes as there is no widespread consumer demand for now

• Explainer: What will happen when the £100 limit is scrapped?

Shoppers will not be able to splash unlimited amounts on contactless cards despite the lifting of a £100 cap on payments as Britain’s banks held off on making changes.

The official limit on individual contactless transactions on credit and debit cards has been scrapped but the UK’s biggest high street and challenger banks have kept the £100 ceiling in place.

Criminals using artificial intelligence tools to take over mobile, bank and online shopping accounts, says Cifas

Criminals are increasingly exploiting AI technology to take over people’s mobile, banking and online shopping accounts, the UK’s leading anti-fraud body has warned.

Last year, a record number of scams were reported to the national fraud database, fuelled by AI, which allows for large-scale deception on “industrialised” levels, according to Cifas, the fraud prevention organisation.

Bank criticised for tone of spending summaries, with one user complaining to ombudsman over ‘humiliating’ use of data

When does lighthearted banter become inappropriate and humiliating?

The digital bank Monzo has been accused of overstepping the mark by using the data it holds to tell one customer with a past eating disorder that she eats a lot of fast food, spends “more than most” on Just Eat takeaways, and had banished her life goals thanks to her spending choices.

It’s easy to let your credit card balance mount up – and hard to admit you have a problem. But help is at hand. We talk to four people who worked their way back into the black

Abbie Marton Bell, a National Debtline adviser, is often the first person her clients will speak to about their debt, after years of carrying the weight of their financial worries alone. Most of the time, they haven’t even told their partner or family, she says, and “you can literally hear the relief in their voice”.

Debt carries a lot of shame, but it’s more common than people might think. In the UK, 84% of adults had some form of credit or loan in the year leading up to May 2024. The average household holds about £2,700 in credit card debt, and it’s only getting worse. Borrowing has been rising at its fastest rate for almost two years, with those hit hardest by the cost of living crisis increasingly using credit to pay for essentials.

After a reckless shopping spree, I ditched contactless payments and bank cards to see how far £200 cash in hand would get me – and if I could improve my spending habits

If I’m lucky, I can just about squeeze a £20 note into the back of my phone case, which holds the device I reflexively tap to pay for almost everything. But this week was different. After a reckless coffee-and-clothing spending spree made a mighty dent in my bank account, I decided I needed to take action. Self-control was one option, but another more drastic route was blunt-force restriction. I would ditch contactless payments, along with debit and credit cards. Instead, I would spend a week relying solely on cash.

After subtracting the lavish lattes and Asos deliveries that had massively inflated my average weekly spend, I allowed myself £180 for the basics, including food and travel. For safety, I gave myself an extra £20. The first task was to take out £200 in cash from the ATM. But what the hell was my pin number? Thanks to contactless capabilities, I hadn’t used this all-important combination of digits in more than a year. Googling how to find it, I discovered I’d have to wait three to five working days to get a letter reminding me of it in the post. This wouldn’t do. I decided to head to my local bank to explain my predicament.

Donald Trump’s leverage over Visa and Mastercard highlights a blind spot in Europe’s ‘independence’ strategy. Emulating India’s response might help

When the centre-left French politician Aurore Lalucq posted a warning last Wednesday that Donald Trump could cut off Europe from international payment systems, the clip went viral. To many, her message made sense. After all, if Mr Trump was prepared to test allies’ boundaries over Greenland, it is not far-fetched to imagine Visa and Mastercard becoming used against a recalcitrant Europe.

The US can turn off payment systems it controls. Russia learned this first-hand after sanctions were rightly applied for its invasion of Ukraine. As up to 60% of Russian retail transactions depended on Visa and Mastercard for authorisation, the ban left many ordinary people stranded without access to funds and unable to buy goods. Under Mr Trump, America’s goal is to “help Europe correct its current trajectory”. Given such talk, Ms Lalucq, who chairs the European parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee, is not wrong in calling for an “Airbus of European payments” to protect the EU.

Fraudsters use phishing to steal card details, which fund a spending spree using Apple Pay or Google Pay

You get a call from your bank and the informed voice asks to you to confirm the personal details they have on file, which you do. You are then asked whether you bought something at an electrical retailer recently for £120 and spent £235 in Birmingham, but neither transaction rings true.

The caller tells you they have blocked the payments but they must now secure your account, and say they will send you a notification to approve, or a code to pass on to them. You feel under pressure to protect your money, so you do what is asked.