Darling Backs Icesave

This is encouraging, but I won't feel certain until the money is 'in my hands' (so to speak - though perhaps that's the safest place for it at the moment!). I listened to the radio broadcast, and it seemed that AD was guaranteeing two things: firstly that money up to the first C.£16,000 would be covered by the British FSCS if the Icelandic equivalent / Icelandic government / cross-Nordic agreement didn't pay up; and secondly that money over £50,000 would also be covered. But he didn't quite make either of those guarantees explicit, and I'd like to see it made completely clear rather than assuming.

I've got less than £16k in an ISA and cash savings account, as has my wife, and I imagine that the majority of the 300,000 savers are in a similar position. So I'm crossing my fingers that at least the first guarantee applies - and I hope for those with more than £50k that the second part does, too.

And a couple more things (sorry for not keeping all this in one post): it would also be good to know if
(a) unpaid interest will be covered and
(b) it will be possible to retain tax-exempt status on ISA savings.
I guess the details are still being worked out, but hopefully the urge to 'restore confidence' means they'll be positive answers to these questions soon.

hadron,

Personally I was preparing to take a big sack down the highstreet and loot House of Fraser!

(joke)

Very welcome news for a lot of people.

Must say I'm disappointed with most commentators in the media, including those on this site, repeating the empty promises of the Icelandic politicians ("First EUR 20,000 per depositor covered by our guarantee"). Especially given that so much as a brief look at the mathematics of the situation would have told you that money simply wasn't there to satisfy said promises!

Compared to stories like Elephant27 I'm small fry in this game, but does anyone else feel like getting all of their money putting it on a box and guarding it?

It does not surprise me that the bank is protecting its Domestic interests first and I fear that the first £16,000 will be lost the rest up to £50,000 will be safe. The Times reported the bank has a large deficit if they cover the £16,000 as promised.

All we can do is sit tight. Boo!!

Yay!

I don't really feel any major animosity towards Iceland. If they haven't got the cash, they haven't got it, right? Am I being too simplistic?

Got to wonder why people would put more than £50k in the account though when they know it's not guaranteed. Did they know it wasn't guaranteed and thought they'd risk it or did they just not know?

Hello, does anyone know just how the process of claiming our money back is going to work, what forms we have to fill in and to whom do we contact? Thank you.

Anubis, there's a site that's said something about the FSCS will send us all a form. Will take about 3 months.

To those people asking why anyone would have more than £50k with Icesave. Well, I think many folk would be in the same situation as me - I took out 3 year fixed rate bonds well over 12 months ago when things looked a lot better than they do today. On the face of it Landsbanki was the biggest bank in Iceland, making good profits and had been around since 1885. They looked a safe home and all the papers and press were recommending them.

WilWak>> In theory yes but as I suggested in my earlier post, I'm pretty sure the UK Icesave operation had no cash at all in it as of yesterday; hence the bounced CHAPS payments.

All that the government would have been taking over would have been a stack of liabilities (i.e. depositors savings).

With today's proposed action, this is effectively what has been done.

"Can not the UK government not just seize Icesave.co.uk and nationalise it?"

It's not ours to nationalise. Don't think we can just grab some other country's stuff.

There was talk yesterday of maybe selling the arm off, so a UK bank may buy it.

Sorry to hear about those with huge amounts of cash in the game. No EU bank has gone down in my memory, so these "limits" were just theoretical until recently. I've only recently had enough money to worry about such things, but still have £30k with Icesave and £10k with Kaupthing. Whilst I'm pleased all of that will be coming back, I use the Kaupthing money to live on, so am having to bail out of the bank just in case.
Buy shares in the makers of safes... there is going to be a surge in demand!

Coming through newswires that Ing have bought the Netherlands Icesave operations, and Kaupthing operations.

Still think it's plausible that someone might buy UK savings accounts - have to wait and see. Bet UK govt are praying!

There seems to be a problem with CHAPS. I asked KAUPTHING EDGE to do a CHAPS transfer on Monday to get my money down to within 50K.

They had so many in the backlog that KAUPTHING didnt process it until Tuesday. But the money didnt hit my account same day or even this morning. Ringing them just now I was told that yesterdays troubles meant that the clearing centre was swamped and my CHAPS order didn't go through.

I like others have had a dreadful last couple of days. I'm relieved that Darling has said that all ICESAVE customers are protected. Fantastic news! I am also delighted that ING DIRECT have now taken over KAUPTHING EDGE savings. Makes me a lot less worried as I wait here for my money to appear out of a black hole and into my account via CHAPS.

All this goes to show how much the banking system needs an OVERHAUL. Why do customers always lose out and never the Banks? My money was taken out of my account on Monday and has yet to appear in the destination account.

I have also asked KAUPTHING to liquidate savings in 3 fixed interest accounts. This has still not been done more than 48 hours later - as they are so busy.

Regulators (phoned them tis morning) need better sticks (they write to the bank and give them 6 weeks for a response!).

ANyone else in the same boat?

This is no more likely to make me vote Labour than free school dinners. Brits in trouble? Government helps Brits. That's the way it should be, really. I appreciate their gesture but it doesn't change anything else.

Let's invade Iceland and sort that lying Prime Minister..

If they go on like this I might have to vote Labour for the first time...

It's been a tough 48 hours...

I realised on Sunday that the Icelandic scheme only mandated a minimum total deposit of (about) £500,000, when converted from the plummeting Icelandic Krona. That's less than £2 each! I guessed that the Icelanders would default on their "guarantee" (I've read a lot of their Sagas, so should have twigged much earlier!). Thank goodness enough people had money in IceSave for the Government to sit up and take notice.

I did move £500 out on Monday (Sunday instruction), closing that particular account. I didn't use CHAPS for such an amount, but the money hasn't shown up on the third day in my bank. I'm hoping it will be there by tomorrow, since the account is already being treated as closed, i.e. I can no longer see it within IceSave. Presumably the sheer volume of similar transactions has clogged the system up.

Does anyone know if there is a compensation procedure for such "leaky" transactions, if the money doesn't eventually surface?

Yes I paid £20 CHAPS transfer fee and yes still no money. KAUPTHING say its extraordinary circumstances and that I'll just have to wait. I transferred 200K so someone else has had this in their account not me.

That's not the point though seems that we take the risks and carry the can if we do something wrong but the regulator is weak.

If CHAPS cannot cope the regulator should make them work through the night until they finish their workload.

I'm a pharmacist - if there was an emergency I'd stay until the job was done. Bankers work until 5pm then that's it. How much does the regulator get paid and where was he last night when CHAPS was breaking down?

My Mum has 180k in an Icesave fixed term account. This matured TODAY. You cannot imagine the frustration yesterday at being within hours of having the money but no way of getting to it.

Until 9am this morning I thought most of it had gone (held out no hope of Iceland paying their part, which was proven correct), and now I just hope the govt comes through on it's pledge. I have been an extremely vocal critic of most things this govt stands for, but Alistair Darling has done something that will be remembered for a long time by a lot of people. Well done to him, and thank you.

"The Treasury said that arrangements were being put in place to ensure that all ISA customers of Icesave would continue to benefit from the tax-free status of their accounts."

Brilliant news!

Just watched the live speech of Alistair Darling at the House of Commons.

All UK Deposit Holders of ICESAVE money will have their money back.

Seen it, heard it - so no return back now.

I will not be happy until the money is actually back in my UK Bank Account, despite what the Government says ... talk is cheap, as we have seen by the Icelandic PrimeMinisters words stating that we are all safe!

Those notices on the Icesave website stating that all funds were safe were simply lies! Luckily I took those re-assuring words as my trigger to empty my accounts (just leaving the ISA).

I have a feeling that those up to £16,000 will be cut adrift. The £16,000 - £50,000 will be paid in full. Those over £50,000 will be offered a portion of their money back. But this is just my suspicious mind working. It depends on what happens from now on - if there is a big UK Bank go down and further bad news then we Icesave customers will get forgotten very quickly!

But, if Darling comes good I may well vote Labour next time!

The devil is in the detail ..... that's all I will say.

Update to earlier posts. Just listened to Darling in the Commons. Kaupthing has now too gone bust. Looks like I've been told a load of b*llocks!

Now I'm sure that the real reason why my CHAPS payment didn't go through was because they have now money. How can they do this?

Is anyone else out there also waiting on money being transferred from

"The Chancellor has also spoken to the Icelandic Finance Minister about the importance of the Icelandic authorities ensuring that UK depositors in Icesave are given the same protections as depositors in Iceland and receive their deposits back in full promptly."
"The Chancellor has also today taken steps to freeze assets of Landsbanki in the UK until the position with respect to the future of the firm and UK creditors becomes clearer."

Its a waiting game now....

I have just over £5ooo in an instant icesave account, and somewhere in the system is my £1000 i transferred on Sunday. I used the BACS system and it has been processed according to my Icesave account but so far nothing in my bank account ! I actually got hold of someone yesterday at Icesave help and they confirmed that as all withdrawals have been cancelled if it wasn't showing up yesterday then it will be returned to my icesave account, but I seem to be having trouble signing in to my Icesave account to check is anyone else having this problem?

I am hopeful we will get this back, and we are lucky that the amount we have is much smaller than other people had in there. I think a lot of the media encouraged us in to Icesave as it was always in the top list for savers, huh I deliberately didn't go with an alternative indian online bank as I thought the one in Iceland seemed safer, looks are very deceptive........

A Labour government is never going to utterly shaft the many savers with up to £16,000 (their core voters?) while bailing out the relatively few with lots more (probable Tories?). And in any case, if that's what they were determined to do, the chancellor would simply have kept his mouth shut. The existing rules would then have operated unchanged, and the small savers would have lost 100% while £50K savers lost only about 40%.

I think everyone with up to £50,000 can breathe more easily now. Whether those with more than this will lose the excess, and whether we'll get paid interest owed as well as capital, remains to be seen. If I get all my capital back, I will be fairly happy to write off the interest.

I suspect that most of us were unaware until too late, that the (original unmodified) UK guarantee was merely a top-up, not also a guarantee of the Icelandic guarantee. Had I realised this, I'd not have saved a penny with Icesave, even 11 months ago when this seemed a very remote possibility. I wonder if even the authorities realized the implications?

Darling is now my darling. Interesting times, indeed.

I withdrew funds from Icesave on Monday via the usual BACS transfer and was told that the transfer was successful. On returning today (you can still get in to view your accounts) I saw that the account status showed ’funds returned“ so my transfer has been cancelled and the funds returned to my now closed account. Someone commented earlier about feeling mugged?

NEWS JUST IN:

My father tells me that his regiment is parachuting into Reykjavik under cover of darkness tonight. Don't worry, dear Fools -- we'll get your money back for you!

Cliff ;0)