Wednesday, September 07, 2011

NS&I withdraw Savings Certificates

On 28th May I said the clock was ticking for those who wanted to get into NS&I Savings Certificates; it's now stopped. Received by email today:

"Dear Mr Norfolk

As you’ve registered to receive updates from NS&I, I’m writing to let you know that all current Issues of NS&I Savings Certificates were withdrawn from general sale at close of business on 6 September 2011.

The latest Issues of Savings Certificates had been on sale for almost four months (since 12 May 2011) and have been very popular. When we launched the Issues we expected the amount invested to be substantial, and our expectations have now been met.

We’re sorry if you haven’t been able to invest on this occasion, but we will contact you again as soon as the next Issues go on general sale.

You can see the current rates for all NS&I accounts and investments on our interest rates page.

Yours sincerely

Garry Bond

Head of Customer Management"

To me, this makes clear that the Government is not really much interested in protecting savers; a point I made to Douglas Carswell MP back in May.

I'll let you know when these Certificates are on sale again - I guess it'll be early in the next tax year, i.e. April/May 2012, after "sales targets" have been set by the Treasury.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You made a mistake in the previous post. You get no interest if you withdraw before one year, after that you get RPI + X, where X increases each year you keep it. If you keep it for 5 years then X=0.5%.

I don't see how this has anything to do with protecting savers. There is already the 85K compensation guarantee, and they made it clear from the start that they wanted to take in about 14 billion this year and would stop when they reached the limit.

Sackerson said...

NS&I Index-Linked Savings Certificates guarantee RPI+0.5% annually. If savers are not protected against inflation, they are not protected.