How financial services insiders are looting £1m a minute of our money

In Britain we have about £4trn in savings. This includes about £500bn in higher-interest bank accounts, £500bn in unit trusts, £800bn in pension funds, £680bn in low-interest bank accounts and £1.5trn with insurance companies. On around £3.5trn of this money we’re losing about 3% a year in charges, fees, commissions, penalties etc. This means we’re paying about £104bn a year, over £400m every working day – about £1m a minute to financial services insiders. On unit trusts we’re paying an unbelievable £59m a day; on pensions it’s an extraordinary £95m a day. If we lived in Holland or Denmark, on our pension savings we’d be paying about a third of what we pay in Britain. We are being fleeced and that’s makes financial services insiders a lot richer than the people whose money they manage.