• 6 months ago
Yorkshire Post business editor Chris Burn reacts to the news that three top building societies are to pay out tens of millions of pounds to customers who were the victims of the collapse of a company called Philips Trust Corporation.
Read more here: https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/leeds-newcastle-and-nottingham-building-societies-to-pay-tens-of-millions-to-philips-trust-victims-4613793
Transcript
00:00 Hi, Chris Byrne here, Yorkshire Post Business and Features Editor. I just wanted to give
00:06 my reaction to the news yesterday that three building societies, Leeds, Newcastle and Nottingham,
00:14 are to collectively pay tens of millions of pounds to customers of theirs who were affected
00:20 by the collapse of a firm called Phillips Trust. It's a complicated story, but essentially
00:27 these customers were introduced at their building societies to unregulated advisors who encouraged
00:33 them to put their homes into trust, protect them from care home fees and to put investments,
00:40 life savings into investment schemes. Now, Phillips Trust weren't a company involved
00:46 with, directly with the building societies, but they ended up taking control of these
00:52 assets and then themselves subsequently went into administration. At that point, they had
01:00 control of more than £138 million of assets, including people's properties and £44 million
01:06 of people's life savings. It transpired that those life savings were essentially potentially
01:14 going to disappear entirely because Phillips Trust had passed on these savings of these
01:19 people to companies who'd made basically a series of high risk loans and administrators
01:27 were struggling to get the money back. Victims say they would never have got involved if
01:31 it wasn't for the building societies in the first place and they'd been banging the drum
01:34 for a long time, hoping to get compensation. That's now happened. It's a really, really
01:42 amazing victory for the campaigners because these building societies have no legal, no
01:48 regulatory requirement to offer this money. It's almost been done on a moral basis because
01:56 of the pressure put on them, in part by the campaigners who've told their stories in the
02:01 Yorkshire Post, but it really is... I've been speaking to the campaigners today, one of
02:06 them described it as a victory for people power, another for the victory for the little
02:10 man and that is what it is. It really is an extraordinary victory and this is life-changing
02:20 money for people who thought they'd lost all their life savings. So yeah, really great
02:24 news.

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