Washed Up

Irish playwright, journalist and co-founder of the London school of Economics, George Bernard Shaw once said, “Cruelty must be whitewashed by moral excuse and pretence of reluctance” and unsurprisingly my experience in the ineffectual hands of the Financial Ombudsman Service has amounted to nothing less.

Established in 2001 by parliament, the Financial Ombudsman Service is supposed to be an impartial and independent body which settles disputes between consumers and UK based businesses providing financial services. We are encouraged to believe the law requires the ombudsman to take into account relevant law and regulations, regulator's rules, guidance and standards, codes of practice, and (where appropriate) what he/she considers to have been good industry practice at the relevant time, in order to make decisions which are fair and reasonable. From a current case load of over 500,000 each year (a level which has swelled its ranks by four fold since the onset of the banking crisis in 2008), it is estimated the FOS rule in favour of the complainant in approximately 49% of cases.

I am not one of the lucky ones.

As a result of my appeal to have my case against HBOS reviewed by an ombudsman, my FOS Final Response has not only dismissed the majority of my case as immaterial and irrelevant but my ombudsman states she has “difficulty in accepting” my claim that either HBOS or their mortgage broker acted fraudulently in order to secure my mortgage business.

I am told she, like my adjudicator, is;

“Not required to respond at ... length or to respond to each and every point raised” but instead has “considered the case in the light of the lending climate at the time [having] noted that the bank has said it will not be pursuing Mr and Mrs [Life after Debt] for the shortfall debt" (a statement which is completely untrue).

Despite the basis of my complaint being that my mortgage application was submitted on line by a broker I never met using an application form I never saw and information I did not supply, I am further advised;

• “ The bank could not have been expected to know the information about the purchase price and date was untrue”
• “The [brokers signature] on the application form [and the photo copied passports] confirms there was a face to face meeting”
•  “The factual inaccuracies in the application...were signed as being true”

What is more she has also informed me, with complete disregard for my protestations that her findings are based on false assumptions and not the evidence, the FOS will be publishing her travesty of a ruling on my case on their website.

Former Chief Ombudsman Walter Merricks once said, “The FOS is an unusual creature. One I would suggest parliament would not have dared to create had the ground work not been laid by a series of voluntary initiatives. It is a one sided scheme offering an unlevel playing field broadly supported by those playing up hill...We do not have to pretend to find what the law is. We unashamedly make new law”.

After six whole years engaged in battle with HBOS which now includes a shambolic, whitewashed FOS investigation into my case of complaint, I have now been thrown straight back into the lawless clutches of one the most infamous banks and their debt collectors.

I find this not only to be immensely cruel, but also wholly immoral and completely unjust.

International Happiness Day

Self improvement guru, lecturer, and author of How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Brekenridge Carnegi once said, “It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it” and today, on International Happiness Day, I could not agree more.

Once devastated to the point of ill health I am relieved to say I am no longer the woman who could once be found underweight, completely bald from stress and cowering in her soon to be repossessed home. Police officers from the Armed Response Unit do not now frequent my drive to discourage angry tradesmen from laying siege and the threat of a claw hammer to my husband’s head is not what I think of when I hear a knock at my door. No more do I endure the involuntary stomach flips which used to go hand in hand with a glimpse of the postman approaching my house and neither do I answer each and every phone call with the trepidation of a woman braced for the onslaught of hard line debt collectors and their verbal abuse.

It has taken almost five years, upwards of three hundred and fifty letters, forty or more debt counselling consultations, three full blown Financial Ombudsman Service investigations, one hundred and fifty five blog posts, twenty thousand two hundred and ninety four page views,  one thousand nine hundred and ninety six tweets,  an inordinate amount of political and economic reading,  numerous phone calls, countless comments on facebook together with thousands and thousands of man hours to discover that although happiness is not dependent on what I have, where I am or what I am doing, happiness is definitely about having something to hope for.

American author and essayist Elizabeth Gilbert once said, “Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it” and although financially our circumstances have remained unchanged, I am very pleased to report that by fighting, striving and insisting I have not only discovered that I have been a victim of mortgage fraud but I have also found someone who investigates financial fraud on behalf of clients trapped by the wrongdoing of lenders and their associates who is prepared to take my case.

Because of this I now most definitely have hope and it is for this reason, today on International Happiness Day, I feel truly happy!

Unjust Desserts

American clergyman, activist and leader in the African civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Junior once said, “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.” However, waiting for history to take a favourable course in the wake of the unquenchable avarice of our unprosecuted banksters has frequently proved beyond the capacity of some to face alone. For us, the determined spirit of the Citizen’s Advice Bureau has been invaluable.

First formulated in 1924 as result a of the Betterton Report on Public Assistance and launched fifteen years later on the day after the break out of the Second World War, this government funded service quickly found debt advice was a key issue for those who sought the expertise of its trained volunteers. After seventy successful years offering free consultations to those in need, their initial two hundred offices had expanded to three and a half thousand UK locations and its 21,500 volunteer staff had assisted some of the UK’s most vulnerable negotiate homelessness, asylum, state benefits, employment law, tenancy rights as well as two major recessions and the onset of the banking crisis.

The CAB now prides itself on being able to assist more than 14.2 million individuals a year. They are supported over the phone and the internet as well as provided with face to face advice from the bureau or visits to their homes. In 2003 following a review of its practices by the Office for Public Management, it was concluded, “the CAB service provides excellent value in return for the public funding it receives. It makes a significant contribution to individuals and communities, as well as to the process of policy-making and service delivery. Its holistic approach, national coverage and independence are to be cherished.”

Ten years have passed since this commendable observation was made and the CAB is currently busier than ever assisting those who have fallen foul of an economic crisis caused by criminality within the banking sector. With only the top 10% of wage earners in the UK continuing to prosper, it goes without saying many of the victims of debt and banking fraud would struggle to find refuge from their assailants without the CAB’s help. Yet despite increasing demand, the CAB has recntly been forced to turn hundreds of thousands of people away because their funding has been axed by 45%.  As a result of these governmental and local authority cut backs they have no alternative but to close offices which are still playing a vital role in the community. Sadly the CAB office which rescued my own sanity is to be one of them.

In contrast to the invaluable contribution being made by the CAB, the delusional and unrepentant bankers armed themselves with weapons of financial mass destruction, used the window of opportunity created by financial deregulation to approach their business activities without moral hindrance plundered the reserves of their banks, their customers and the economy.  Furthermore, by obtaining tax payer funded bailouts to preserve their jobs and their “modest” remunerations, they have cunningly redirected funding formerly earmarked for the auspicious community serving CA B and deftly removed the only means by which many of their victims have been able to fight back.

Roman economist, lawyer and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero once said,” There is no sanctuary so holy that money cannot profane it, no fortress so strong that money cannot take it by storm” and recent history clearly illustrates that a small group of inauspicious bankers have used money to both profane and to storm and it is the Citizen's Advice Bureau and it's service users who are now being forced to pay the price. 

Fat, Cats and the Cream

Albert Einstein once said, “Wire telegraph is like a very, very long cat, you pull its tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Radio operates in exactly the same way: you send signals here they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat” yet, despite almost one hundred years of technological advancement and much virtual cat tail pulling on my part I have, until this week, remained both impatient and noticeably void of any communication on the subject of my Halifax Bank of Scotland mortgage miss-selling case or my complaint sighting unfair practices within the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Regularly experiencing,firsthand, the lack of regulatory impetus which continues to halt the complaints progress for the individual, it has been no surprise to hear that not only are global financial reforms falling behind schedule but the larger banks have been given yet more time (some as late as 2019) to comply with new risk management regulation. In a climate where the UK's Treasury Select Committee are fearful that without their oversight the long awaited Financial Services Authority report into the collapse of HBOS may not otherwise be “fair and balanced” it is not difficult to imagine the individual will never be heard with the odds so grossly and unequally stacked against them.

Reports stating the UK’s corporate and banking elite are not only having a profitable and prosecution free recession but will also enjoy an average of 27% in pay increases this year only add to an over all sense of futility felt by those suffering the job losses and home repossessions as a direct result of widespread banking criminality and unlawful market manipulation. Far from reconciling the vast and ever increasing divide between those of us who have been forced to shoulder the consequences of economic terrorism and those who continue to turn it to their advantage, it is nigh on impossible to believe anyone but the cream of the FTSE elite can expect anything even close to economic justice or a comforting pre-Christmas windfall.

Further more, with the knowledge that some victims of PPI miss-selling waited almost two decades to secure redress for this multi billion pound act of corporately endorsed banking fraud while four long years having passed since Tony Boorman, the principal Financial Ombudsman in 2008, first told Channel Four several banks were under investigation for mortgage miss-selling, it has been nothing short of fanciful to hold hopes that endless hours of carefully researched communication will result in one individual’s anguish being either acknowledged or heard by anyone other than a few loyal FB friends and a modest number of Life after Debt Blog and Twitter followers.

However, this week nothing could be further from the truth. I am delighted to report, after years of fighting and writing, I have received,

• Two hundred and forty five page views, twenty four comments, seventeen additional followers along with fifteen retweets all as a result of my Platitudes and Placations post

•   A formal acknowledgement from the Financial Ombudsman Service stating that, after almost a whole year of waiting, my overvaluation complaint is finally being investigated by HBOS

And

• A lengthy letter from the FOS team manager which fully investigates their dealings with me, “sincerely apologizes” (twice) for their “failings” in the handling of my case and ask me to accept £500 by way of compensation for the “distress and inconvenience” I have suffered.

Albert Einstein also said, “Reality is a mere illusion” and despite the impression that countless hours dedicated to stating my case had seemingly fallen on deaf ears, in reality, my very, very, long communication cat has been howling its head off. I only wish those who caused the "distress and inconvenience" could be made to pick up the bill instead of the long suffering taxpayer.

Business Worries

Eighteenth century English writer and printer Samuel Richardson once said, “Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity,” and while there is no doubt the calamitous circumstances of recent years have necessitated a certain amount of re-invention on my part, it has been the loss of my financial integrity which has caused me to suffer the most.

A little more than four years ago I was living the life of a stay at home mother of five children and wife of a successful property developer. We resided in a beautifully restored sixteenth century barn on the banks of the river Severn and enjoyed regular visits to the Costa del Sol where we stayed in our equally beautiful Spanish apartment.  Often hosting gatherings both at home and abroad for friends and family while organising and attending fund raising activities for the school, I endeavoured to be an upstanding and contributory member of our small community and a supportive silent partner in my husband’s business.

To my horror, I learnt the credit crunch of October 2008 was not just something which was happening to other people and quickly found being a victim of it meant losing our home, our business and our financial future. While errant bankers were using the sub prime mortgage market to prop up their balance sheets, my husband had, without my knowledge, endeavoured to prop up our own business by borrowing to the hilt. The subsequent and some would say calculated collapse of the property market along with the demise of our business bank Heritable not only meant we were unable to service our loans but we were without the means with which to repay our creditors. I was crippled with the shame from the demise of our financial integrity and made full disclosure of all future financial matters a condition of our marriage’s survival.

During the years which followed I have struggled to trust my husband despite guarantees he will never again exclude me from his decision making. Thankfully our lives, and my self esteem, have tentatively pieced themselves back together and gradually I have relaxed into some semblance of normality. Once again, I live in a beautiful house (albeit rented through friends and shared with lodgers), my children remain in independent schools (albeit through bursaries for which I have gone cap in hand to secure) and through the generosity of our family, we still visit the Costa del Sol from time to time. I have even started to organise and attend charitable events in an effort to once again be an upstanding and contributory member of the community. However, I also spend many a covert hour communicating with our creditors and their regulators and I continue to find tasks of this nature excruciatingly painful.

On the other hand, I am delighted to report that these days life is far from all bad. There are even moments of immense pride and pure joy. Only recently, for example, my eldest son, at the age of seventeen, secured a place at university to read English and Creative Writing only to discover, because of his young age, he would be unable to take up his place in hall without a parent present when collecting the keys. Thanks to the kindness of my older daughter who suggested she drive us, not only did this allow me to relax in the knowledge her company car’s satellite navigation would deliver us to our destination without out issue, but it also gave me a very welcome but all too rare chance to play my part of exceptionally proud mother while, for the first time in twenty five years, enjoying a fascinating afternoon’s sightseeing in London. It was unadulterated bliss.

Four years on from the onset of our personal financial crisis, I am very pleased to find our modest income, with the help of tax credits, continues to cover our outgoings and although my husband’s job with M & S is a menial one, it provides him the opportunity to study via the Open University. Without the worry of creditors hurling abuse at the door, over the phone or via the post I have become settled in a way I would have struggled to imagine in the days which followed my discovery of our true financial position. I have even begun to believe that one day our financial integrity may well be fully restored and allow us to lay to rest the ghosts.

However, this morning’s revelations have blown all thoughts of domestic bliss and hopes for a future of financial integrity to smithereens and I am consumed with fear for what may be to come because,

My husband tells me he has started a small business.

He has opened a bank account and made his first trade.

He tells me there is to be no borrowing and no stock holding.

He insists he will not give up his day job nor will he let this venture interfere with his studies.

He believes this is the only method in which to secure us a reasonable financial future.

He regrets he did not choose to tell me sooner but was concerned I might discourage him or it would cause me unnecessary worry.

He assures me he knows what he is doing.

He promises me everything will to be alright.

The trouble is.....

I’ve heard this all once before!

American actress, playwright and sex symbol Mae West once said, “People who are surprised easily need to be surprised more often” and I am most certainly guilty of being shocked to hear my husband, after eighteen years of marriage, four years of which were endured in the grips of an integrity stripping calamity, has now, without any mention or discussion, embarked upon another business venture. While I have no doubt he views my concerns for what amounts to little more than his opening a bank account as an over-reaction arising from my being over-sensitized to the consequences of debt, I unlike Mae West do not believe the solution to this is to be surprised more often.

Quite frankly I find the prospect of repeating the last four, however remote, nothing  short of terrifying.