Mortgage Charter and Unclaimed Benefits

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

New figures reveal that more than a quarter of a million homeowners have temporarily reduced their mortgages payments, or extended their mortgage term, since lenders agreed to offer better support to customers in June 2023 through what was called the Mortgage Charter.

There's been a sharp rise in people taking their tax-free lump sum out of their pension over the past year. Since 2015 people over the age of 55 could take 25 per cent of their pension pots tax-free and then use the rest as they wished. These figures from the regulator the Financial Conduct Authority show tens of thousands more people made that choice - why?

Millions of people are missing out on tens of billions of pounds worth of help ranging from benefits to social tariffs from utility companies. That's according to the latest analysis Policy in Practice suggests. What type of benefits are people missing out on?

And the £100 limit on contactless card payments looks set to be scrapped. The regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, published plans this week to let banks set their own limit - or indeed have no limit at all.

Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporters: Dan Whitworth and Jo Krasner Researcher: Eimear Devlin Editor: Jess Quayle

(First broadcast 12pm on Radio 4 on Saturday 13th September 2025)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
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0:39.1	More than a quarter of a million homeowners have reduced their mortgage payments
0:42.3	or extended their term to help them cope with rising interest rates.
0:46.7	Seven million people are missing financial help they could get, but don't claim,
0:51.2	says the most details look yet at these unclaimed billions, and will plans to
0:56.0	scrap the £100 limit on contactless card payments allow thieves to take more? But first,
1:02.2	there's been a sharp rise in the number of people taking their tax-free lump sum out of their
1:07.2	pension fund over the past year. Since 2015, of course, people over the age of 55
1:12.1	have been able to take out their pension or part of it, and 25% of that is tax-free.
1:17.6	Newly obtained figures show tens of thousands more people made that choice before the budget
	...

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