Halifax's £245 fee for a new mortgage

The Halifax, Britain's biggest mortgage lender, is to introduce a £245 charge for new customers. Its so-called 'mortgage account fee' will apply even to those who choose to pay a higher interest rate to avoid arrangement fees.

The bank said the new fee will replace its previous £175 mortgage exit arrangement charge.

It scrapped the charge last July following pressure from the Financial Services Authority watchdog. Critics said the bank, owned by HBOS, is simply recouping lost revenue.

Louise Cuming, head of mortgages at moneysupermarket.com, said: 'HBOS has waited until the exit fees debate has died down before sneaking in a more expensive charge. I urge HBOS to scrap this decision.'

The FSA, which regulates banks, said the matter is not an issue for it.

A Halifax spokesman said the new fee is clear and upfront and replaces several charges.

'We are very late introducing it,' she added. 'The Abbey did it a year ago and is charging £350. Our single fee is less than the total of all the previous fees we have charged.'

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IMLA and the CML pair up on lender IT survey

The Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association have teamed with Frank Eve Consulting to analyze how lenders and brokers use the internet to speed-up the lending process.

This year the study will focus on how lenders integrate their technologies into the broker point of sale systems and the priorities for lenders in terms of third-party integration.

It will also be extended to review broker point of sale systems, application processing systems and sourcing systems. The goal is to help lenders and brokers establish an overall e-commerce strategy and prioritize IT spending.

The study will define basic threshold requirements, best practice and emerging best practice in lender-broker technology.

Data collected will be used for the Mortgage Strategy Technology Service Awards to be presented at a presentation lunch in November.

Frank Eve, managing director of Frank Eve Consulting, says: “This year’s study will show how the mortgage e-commerce environment is adjusting to the effects and implications of the credit crunch. We will be evaluating Lender – Distributor connectivity and considering where lender strategies will lead the industry, with particular focus on how lenders are integrating with broker point of sale systems and trading platforms.”

Michael Coogan, director general of the CML, adds: “One year on, and the market environment is very different for lenders and brokers as we embark on this year’s benchmark study.

“But the application of information technology will continue to be important to our industry. We are therefore pleased once again to support the study, and look forward to seeing how IT innovation is helping lenders and intermediaries address the new challenges confronting the industry.”

GE Money finalises Polish bank deal

GE Money announced that it has closed the transaction to buy Poland’s BPH Bank, once the country’s third-largest, but now barely making it into the Top Ten there. In its glory days, BPH was the subsidiary of Germany’s HVB, and acquired a reputation for good customer service and fast growth. When Italy’s UniCredit bought HVB in 2005, BPH was partially merged with UniCredit’s Polish bank, Pekao, the country’s second-largest bank, taking the corporate banking, investment funds, stock broking divisions.

Having lost many of its best employees, large parts of its most lucrative businesses, and several hundred branches, BPH was still an attractive target for GE Money, which was looking to expand in the Polish market. GE Money paid about €625 million ($970 million) for BPH, not a lot for a Polish bank, and plans to invest an additional $50 million this year, with a total of $150 million to be invested over the next few years. Polish regulators approved the sale of BPH this month, and the two banks should merge next year. The new bank will be headed by Jozef Wancer, who originally helped build BPH into one of the country’s largest banks. A priority will be to re-establish the bank’s corporate banking. In December, BPH had no corporate customers, now it has 600, said Mr Wancer. By the end of the year, he hopes to double that. The goal is for the bank to climb back into Poland’s Top Five in five years.

The two banks’ strength is in consumer lending, where GE brings an aggressive approach to mortgage and consumer loans, while BPH has a national network, and a well-known brand. GE has a problem loan ratio of about 1.6 per cent, while BPH’s is a better-than-industry-average of 4 per cent.

“We are very bullish on the prospects of the Polish market,” said Dmitri Stockton, president and chief executive of GE Money in central and eastern Europe. “Our risk management capability is one of our strengths. It’s a key thing we have to offer.”

www.leasingworld.co.uk

TietoEnator slumps as bid talks end

Shares in Scandinavian IT services vendor TietoEnator slumped in morning trading after it said talks with potential suitors had ended without any firm offers.

TietoEnator's shares slipped 6.3%, or EUR0.88, to EUR13.03 in morning trading after the vendor released a statement saying it had ended discussions with "a number of strategic and financial parties" after they failed to result in "any firm and actionable offers".

TietoEnator has been talking to various parties since receiving an unsolicited EUR15 per share bid from private equity firm Nordic Capital in March. The offer period for Nordic Capital's bid - which the board urged shareholders to reject - lapsed on 26 May, after being put back three times.

But in the company statement, Anders Ullberg, chairman, TietoEnator, says: "Having evaluated these alternatives and the inherent nature of each potential offeror, and their value attributes, the board's unanimous view is that it has not received a firm and actionable offer that represents a fair value for shareholders and optionholders, and therefore all discussions between the company and potential offerors have come to an end."

Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv reported today that TietoEnator's rival EDB Business Partner had decided not to make a bid after its partner, US private equity firm Blackstone, withdrew from the process. According to the report, without Blackstone EDB and fellow consortium member Telenor could not afford to beat Nordic Capital's earlier offer.

Ullberg says the vendor will now concentrate on the restructuring and cost cutting programme it embarked on in January, designed to generate annual savings of more than EUR100 million by the end of 2009.

The performance improvement programme, followed an 18-month run of volatile earnings at TietoEnator, which had mainly been caused by project over-runs in the company's banking and insurance and healthcare and welfare units. The vendor is also eliminating 800 jobs, mainly in Finland and Sweden.