Don't undermine the Ombudsman

Mortgage lender HSBC is being unusually intransigent in its attitude to the Financial Ombudsman's ruling in favour of a borrower who objected to its dual mortgage rate policy.

A strategy aimed at ensuring that established borrowers were not continually subsidising new customers has backfired badly. Lenders tried to have their cake and eat it. They should have cut rates for all variable rate loans and discounted less aggressively to win new customers.

They were bound to offend borrowers who had taken out discount deals linked to the lender's variable mortgage rate, only to be told later that there would now be one rate for them and another for other borrowers. Now, lenders should simply cut their 'old' variable rates to bring them in line with the new ones.

HSBC is not the only institution that appears to be smarting from recent Ombudsman decisions. Rather like the MPs who have found Parliamentary Commissioner Elizabeth Filkin's interventions so irritating, banks and building societies are complaining about the tenacity of the Ombudsman.

They should not try to undermine the service. Confidence in financial services companies is low. It will be strengthened if savers and borrowers know there is a robust adjudicator available to resolve complaints when something goes wrong.

The latest act in the Equitable Life drama is being played to its climax. Investors must now grapple with 190-page tomes setting out a scheme aimed at stabilising Equitable's finances. The terms are not attractive but investors, even many of those with the guaranteed pensions that brought Equitable down, have no real option but to vote in favour. If the deal is approved, one of the big questions for investigators now examining Equitable's demise is why such a deal could not have been brokered years ago.

Cash is pleased to see that the Office of Fair Trading has issued guidelines to control private debt counsellors. We drew attention three years go to concerns about their fees and poor levels of service. The private services may improve now, but there is still no need for people with debt problems to pay for advice that is available free from charities.