Lloyds Banking said it “does not currently believe” it will need to make any change to its provisions for the motor finance compensation scheme, following the final guidance issued by the financial watchdog at the start of the week.
The Financial Conduct Authority said on Monday night that millions of motor finance customers should receive larger compensation than its previous guidance in October.
After carrying out an assessment of the implications and impact of the final rules, Lloyds said some things remained uncertain, including the rate of customer responses, operational costs and whether any litigation ensues.
Donald Trump “did nothing of what was expected in his speech”, says market analyst Chris Beauchamp at IG.
“Instead of ‘no more war’, we got ‘no, more war!’, with heavier strikes expected and a fresh warning of attacks on power plants.
“This leaves markets back where they were last week, and now we have to price in hundreds of millions of barrels of oil that aren’t coming out any time soon.
“The gloomy predictions of last week would have been perhaps misplaced if Trump had signalled a quick end, but now markets are back to pricing in economic catastrophe.”
The FTSE 100 is predicted to fall fairly steeply on Thursday morning as oil prices rose after Donald Trump said in a speech overnight that the US “will hit Iran extremely hard over the next 2-3 weeks” to bring an end to the war.
A fall of 84 points has been called for London’s blue-chip index, following a day when it bounded over 188 points higher to close at 10,364.79.
Markets had been buoyed by what had seemed like growing hopes for a potential diplomatic off-ramp in the Iran hostilities, with US stocks closed higher overnight too.
The Nasdaq climbed 1.2%, the S&P 500 rose 0.7% and the Dow Jones aded 0.5%.
But Asian markets are all down sharply this morning, with Japan’s Nikkei falling 2.6%, India’s Sensex down 2% and China’s Shanghai and Hang Seng indices both down over 1%.
Oil prices are up, with Brent crude jumping 6.5% to $107.75 a barrel, while gold and silver are down 4% and 6.4%, with copper down 1.8%.
Markets do not like the sound of President Trump’s reiterated threat to hit Iran’s power plants and other civilian infrastructure if there is no deal negotiated to end the Iran war.