http://www.bankstone.co.uk Bankstone Limited Website Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:12:45 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I’m at Bankstone’s vast and gleaming corporate headquarters campus in shabby former mill town Brighouse for this week’s test drive. It’s a semi-official test, in the sense that the vehicle’s owner, the elegant Rachel Stow of Thorneycroft Solicitors, hasn’t exactly been consulted. In fact the doyenne of the Macclesfield legal scene ... http://www.bankstone.co.uk/more-testing-times-for-marty-butch How very disappointing! Just when Bankstone News had concluded that those erstwhile sex-crazed delinquents of the insurance advertising world Professional Insurance Agents (PIA) had turned over a new and wholesome leaf (see previous story), they’re back on the inside front cover of Insurance Times, no less, with a distinctly salacious ... http://www.bankstone.co.uk/insurance-world-goes-sex-mad FSA chief exec Hector Santa this week mounted an eloquent - if barely audible - defence of his leading role in the RBS debacle. Called to give evidence before the Treasury Select Committee, Santa explained reasonably that he had never wanted the stupid job in the first place but some ... http://www.bankstone.co.uk/sorry-i-didnt-quite-catch-that There are many ways to go about selling an insurance business, but according to Insurance Age, Group Armagh has hit on a particularly unusual modus operandi for hiving off its UK operations. Group Armagh’s Parisian parent “fired the starting gun” on 12 January “so the race has started,” the paper reported ... http://www.bankstone.co.uk/group-armagh-the-facts As regular readers will recall from last week’s Bankstone News, we left off half-way through a thrilling Daily Mail lid-lift on the sordid worm can that is insurance claims. There now follows the remainder of our in-depth investigation of the article in question. If you missed the first part - ... http://www.bankstone.co.uk/last-weeks-left-overs In the first of his test drive reviews for Bankstone News, our new correspondent Marty Butch puts Dickon Tysoe's Panda to the toughest of tests... It’s bright and early when I pitch up in affluent Wharfe valley fleshpot Addingham to try out Dickon Tyson’s automotive pride and joy, a Fiat Panda ... http://www.bankstone.co.uk/putting-a-panda-through-its-paces The Daily Mail is justly feted for its Squeezed-Middle-Englander type take on who should be banged up/banned/deported etc. Looks like insurance people could now be in the paper's sights. Quite literally sickened by the fact that the average TPFT motor insurance premium has supposedly risen from £333 (the number of the ... http://www.bankstone.co.uk/what-even-policemen Leading UK motorcycle accident provider BLD confused the hell out of Bankstone News this week by claiming to have brought two paint shops together under an umbrella. Initially nonplussed by this seemingly outlandish announcement, Bankstone News has since ascertained that Ringworm-Hants-based BLD has in fact bought a firm called Altamura Concepts, ... http://www.bankstone.co.uk/conceptual-progress-for-bld Brits’ willful and misguided attempts to continue owning and driving cars have helped bring about an astonishing increase in personal indebtedness that will see the average UK family owing twice as much in unsecured borrowings by this time next year as it did this time last year. Latest figures from Aviva ... http://www.bankstone.co.uk/end-of-the-road-for-overstretched-families Bleeding heart lefty national broadcaster the BBC has this week accused insurers of ‘discriminating’ against unemployed people by charging them more for their car insurance. BBC reporters asked fashion house BIBA to ask three insurance brokers to source motor insurance quotes for a fictional office worker and then go back ... http://www.bankstone.co.uk/do-me-a-favour