Saving investments?

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1:00Wildcott. Explore vibrant seasonal flavors like their trending mango yuzu chantilly cake. Great for brunch or an after-dinner treat. Speaking of brunch, check out their deviled eggs, cold-pressed juices, and more. Spring is in bloom now at Whole Foods Market. Wake Up To Money from BBC 5 Live. Hello, welcome to Wake Up To Money. National savings and investments is expected to pay millions in compensation to customers. Facebook and YouTube have been found liable in a social media addiction trial and the British Chamber of Commerce is urging businesses not to retreat in light of the conflict in Iran.

1:39Wake Up To Money with Sean Farrington. Good morning to you. Wake Up To Money on BBC Five Live. It is Thursday morning, the 26th of March. We are just after half past five. Thank you for being with us this morning. Thank you for listening to our chat that we had with Greg Jackson, the boss of Octopus, that you may have caught a little bit earlier. You'll be able to catch that on the Big Boss interview podcast feed. Hopefully you're subscribed on BBC Sounds. If not, get on there as well as Wake Up To Money subscription. You don't need anything more from that app. There's plenty more on it if you want it, though.

2:12Of course, we will go through a few of those messages in a moment about the changing world of energy and what's needed as well to get through the next few weeks and months with energy prices, oil prices high. That will come up in our conversation as well. Before six, I want to say a very good morning to Zoe Gillespie, Investment Manager at RBC Brewing Dolphin. Hi, Zoe. Good morning. Now, top of the agenda this morning, really, is these developments at national savings and investments. Many people may well have, there will be millions of people who have had some form of relationship with NS &I over the years, over their families' years, over the decades, whether it's through premium bonds or savings accounts.

3:02And, you know, the front of the Telegraph, which has been leading on this story now for a couple of days, calling it a savings scandal where hundreds of millions of pounds could need to be repaid to people after money owed to thousands of savers was misplaced. This is not what savings accounts are supposed to be all about, is it? No, it's meant to be a safe place for people to put money. And I think you're right, the extent of it is unknown. But Ennis and I is one of Britain's largest banks and manages about£100 billion for more than 26 billion people. So it's certainly a household name and thing that certainly a lot of people use.

3:46So confidence has to be paramount in what they do and people have to feel that their money is safe. The impact, I think, we know at this stage is, as you say, is into tens of millions, but it's who's going to pick up the tab and whether it's going to be the taxpayer that's ultimately going to be responsible for this. Yes, so The Telegraph reporting that the bank is in discussions with the Treasury to repay 37 ,000 savers whose money is understood to have been misplaced after failings going back years. And one of the things in particular that the Telegraph has picked up on is around payouts linked to its bereavement services.

4:26So if a member of your family has had, whether it's premium bonds or a savings account, has passed away, and then when you're dealing with the estate of that person and going through where they were keeping their money and what premium bonds they had, for example. The customer services and the ability for families to get the information they need and in the end the money that they're owed from NS &I doesn't seem to have materialised for many, many savers in a timely fashion. That's a particular customer service fail, isn't it, Zoe? Yeah, it is. And as I say, it goes back to having that point you put money into a bank or into premium bonds for that safety.

5:13And the confidence has to be there in the system. And again, for one of the kind of bigger institutions in the country, it's not a good look just now. So I think it's certainly something that they'll be keen to rectify as quickly as possible. And why is national savings and investment a little bit different to the high street banks that we would often think about? The Nation Savings Bank, as I open up its website this morning. But it really is, isn't it? Yeah, it is the Nation Savings Bank. And I think there's also that the premium bond part of it has always been popular as well. So I think that's important.

5:52Yeah, so it's backed by the Treasury, backed by the government, backed by the taxpayer. So therefore that means, you know, the way the Telegraph is telling the story and we don't know exactly how all of this is going to play out. But for a bank that's backed by the Treasury, those costs, therefore, may well have to be covered through those means. And therefore that's taxpayer cash that might have to do that. So we've got the pension minister, Torsten Bell, expected to address this issue in a common statement later today. what's going to be the key things now Zoe that they're going to have to get on top of very quickly when you've got an issue like this?

6:34I think like anything you have to I think that many issues find out what has caused the issue and how do you fix it and like anything who's been impacted by it and then I think you have to look at putting procedures in place like anything to stop these things happening again But I think they're going to have to be transparency with everything they're doing. And I think that's going to be, as you say, when government ministers involved, really just trying to see how quickly they can solve it too. 85058, do let us know if over the years, National Insurance, National, I have to stop saying that, National Savings and Investment, NS &I, premium bonds, whether it's savings you've had.

7:13If somebody in your family has passed away, which is what The Telegraph in particular is talking about here, some issues there, but it's not just that. many having customer service issues for some time with NS &I, which we have discussed over the years. There's been attempts to try and improve the way NS &I works. And we've heard from many listeners over time about grumbles as interest rates change, the odds of winning on the premium bonds have changed over the years as well. So your thoughts, your experiences of NS &I, please, 85058. Right, trade routes disrupted, energy costs spiking, warnings of inflationary shocks to come as well.

7:57We've heard from many, many businesses how their budgets are being squeezed further because of the US-Israel war with Iran. Kevin Brundish with us this morning, chief executive of Lion Vault, a battery scale-up company focused on developing next-genery battery technologies. Kevin, good morning to you. Good morning, Sean. Plenty to talk to you about in the world of batteries and energy. But I just wonder, just from running a business, Kevin, in the last few weeks, where have you seen disruptions or where do you envisage them coming given everything that's happened? Well, I think you've already heard about the energy price challenge.

8:34And, of course, any business gets hit by that. And if you're a small business, as we are in particular, it isn't easy to hedge your energy prices. So you do get impacted by the ups and downs that we are seeing right now. So we don't have that financial clout in the same way that a large company could hedge and perhaps ride through this with a smoother journey. So that's definitely one. And of course, goods being delivered, everything gets more expensive when energy gets more expensive. So, yeah, that is a squeeze on the cost side. And of course, we have to pass it on to our customers. That's the challenge.

9:08When you say hedging with your energy prices, what in theory could you do or would you like to do if you were a bigger company that had a bit more financial might? you know you've got your energy bill how can you protect yourself from these big moves you can a little bit i think um you know i think everybody suffers ultimately because the cost of energy passes on to everything you buy because everything uses energy to produce or to be transported so there's no real way of escaping it but on the energy price side and we particularly use a lot of energy in the production process directly uh for batteries so that that is one area where we're looking seriously about hedging.

9:47So yes, you try and smooth out your journey. It's a bit like you can buy fixed rates if you're an individual household. So that's the type of thing you're looking to do. Try and get a better price that doesn't get impacted by the ups and downs. I wonder how much this stuff, the chat about the businesses, energy bills will be coming up as people mingle around at the British Chambers of Commerce conference, which kicks off a little later today. Siobhan Havilland is the Director General of that trade body that represents so many businesses from around the country. Siobhan, good morning to you. Good morning.

10:21Has the agenda changed? You would have had this in the diary for quite some time. Has the agenda changed for what the message may well be, whether it's from you to your members or from your members to the world? Well, it definitely will be high on the list, of course, of topics today. So it is indeed very timely, Sean. Today is about bringing businesses together with opportunities from all over the world to help our businesses find new places to export. Export, of course, is the quickest way to grow the economy. You know, we estimate that if we'd grown exports 2 % last year, we would have added 0.6 % onto GDP.

11:00And given it was 1.3%, that's a huge opportunity. So opportunities to trade, absolutely. But of course, the war and tariff uncertainty is massively worrying for business and it's squeezing them on both sides. As we heard from Kevin, tariffs make it more expensive to export. Energy makes it more expensive to make your product. So huge uncertainty there. But the message today, therefore, is don't retreat. Find new markets, find new opportunities, keep exporting. Don't retreat, Kevin. in well when scenarios are variable there are always winners and losers so there are markets that are thriving and obviously there are markets that are more challenged i mean we heard earlier the move to electric vehicles i have electric vehicle personally you know that that's a drive electrification and removal from the reliance on on fossil fuels and not even just for the environmental impact but from a price stability impact and from a security of supply impact That's something that certainly our particular business, the world of batteries, sees as a real driving and thriving market.

12:10Siobhan, do businesses have the resilience, we were talking about this yesterday, have they had the resilience in recent years with all the challenges that have come their way, to be able to not retreat? I've probably been saying it every show for the last couple of weeks. given we started this year hearing from bosses almost every day on Wake Up To Money with more optimism than we've heard them for a while. It might have been hope and fingers crossed with nothing on the horizon, but it did feel like, okay, we've got that last budget out of the way at the end of last year. Now we can look into 2026 and hopefully nothing on the horizon.

12:51That has gone out the window. Can businesses not retreat? Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right, Sean. We did start the year more optimistically. And this conflict, well, first of all, the change in US tariffs, and then this conflict have been another blow to business, another set of uncertainties. You know, as you know, businesses don't have a price cap on energy like consumers have. We estimate that a third or so of businesses, their fixed term contracts will be up in April. And they're really worried about that. And they just they don't have the ability to absorb another set of huge costs. They've been holding on to cash over the years, as we've seen shock after shock.

13:35And so it really is going to be it's going to be very hard, especially for small businesses who can't absorb it. So what questions have you seen coming into you in the last three weeks? It was interesting hearing, you know, Greg Jackson, the boss of Octopus, say that they've seen 50 % more inquiries and sales, you know, when you put it all into the mix about solar panels and electric cars from customers just since the war in Iran began. From your perspective, what has been top of the questions that need to be answered from businesses around the country? Yeah, yeah. We launched earlier this month our diplomatic advisory hub, which is a way of helping business understand geopolitical risk.

14:20Again, timely. We had a thousand businesses on our first webinar. What they were asking us about was how they deal with delays in supply chains, delays in product coming in. They're worrying about moving people around the world, of course, increased raw material costs. but then their energy. And a quarter of firms were already telling us they were struggling to pay their bills before, even before this conflict started. So we're sort of talking to government to say, you know, we're early in this conflict, but let's keep all options on the table. Obviously, last time around with Ukraine, we had a big, we had a well-energy price cap for business.

15:01That's expensive. What options can we look at this time round? Can we look at extending discounts for high energy users? Can we look at bills and some of the levies in there to take that off the plate for business? But your point about renewables, and obviously we heard from Kevin is, we want to move to energy security to renewables as quickly as possible, because that will smooth out shocks like this from around the world. What's your biggest concern for businesses around the country at the moment now? Do you see some, you know, that we're maybe clinging on to that early year optimism and I don't know potentially are you expecting more businesses to really struggle financially now?

15:43Yeah we are expecting business to struggle financially there in April if your energy bills are coming up you're also probably looking at increasing the living wage again this year we've got sick pay day one coming in as part of the Employment Rights Act there are more costs coming down the track so we're saying to businesses talk to your energy provider, try and get on a fixed term contract, try and smooth out those things. Hopefully, this will be a very short lived thing. We need this conflict to finish as soon as possible. Conflict tariffs, bad for business, bad for consumers, bad for economies.

16:21How are you expecting that to play out? You're very, very engaged with your members, whether it's the official surveys you do or just merely the day to day communications that the chambers of commerce right around the country will be having with each other. Are you now envisaging more job losses, more companies going bust this year than you previously thought at the beginning of the year? I don't think we can say that yet, Sean. We're monitoring it very closely. As you say, we're talking to our members day in and day out. We're talking to government about how we can support our members. We've got to see this play out.

16:57But in the meantime, while we're looking at the downsides, we've also got to keep looking at the upsides. So I was with an amazing business in Leeds a couple of weeks ago. They were struggling with US tariffs, big exports to the US. And then, of course, they're focusing on the Middle East until four weeks ago. And now we're helping them look at new markets in Europe. So yes, there's going to be challenges, but let's find new opportunities, new partners, new places around the world where we can export and grow our business. Siobhan, thank you. hope the conference goes well. Siobhan Haviland there, Director General of British Chambers of Commerce.

17:32If you're off there yourself, if you're involved at all, running one of these businesses right around the country, do let us know. And in the coming days, let us know what the conversation has been like as well. 85058. Kevin, how do you view it after every year there's something else, There has been something else, whether it's COVID and energy price crunches, various budgets, putting extra pressure on businesses. Now you've got another energy price crisis. How do you crack on with an assumption there's just going to be another crisis around the corner? Yeah, well, you've heard most of the snippets and energy up, instability in markets.

18:18It's they're things that businesses don't like. They tend to impact on investment as well, which is harder to find. So growth then becomes more challenging. I think you just have to find your path. I mean, it's a business to business. Luckily, I think in the world of batteries, which is where I sit, we have a multiple sort of market opportunity. So where one market might be struggling, another market will thrive. And I think the renewable side is definitely a thriving space. obviously we are also focused on some of the defense applications like drones there's a big surge in opportunity there so it is about you know being adaptable being flexible and trying to be resilient small businesses have that advantage 85058 your thoughts please had a few messages coming in about national savings and investments uh who's this has been in touch Charlie from South London said, with NS &I, I just found out that my date of birth had been recorded incorrectly for at least 56 years with incorrect information taken from Experian that they use.

19:23IDing has been so difficult such I was locked out of my premium bond account for at least a decade. The date of birth incorrectly held was only discovered last month. If I died, my will could not have been honoured. No one would have known my incorrect date of birth. I'm currently requesting a subject access request to see what other incorrect information is held. Breaching the DP Act and GDPR, it's been a nightmare really. NS &I have been impossible to deal with over the decades, says Charlie from South London. 85058, have you got similar experiences of national savings and investments? We're talking about the potential for possibly hundreds of millions of pounds to have had to be paid back to or owed to customers who have not been able to access savings that they or their family have had over the years, whether it's premium bonds, savings accounts, whatever that might be.

20:18So your thoughts, please. I see a few messages coming in just generally not impressed with NSNI over this time. Zoe, a big court case that's been going on in the United States around some of the world's biggest tech giants. So Meta, which has Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram under its watch, and YouTube, which is owned by Alphabet and Google business, have been found liable in this landmark case over social media addiction. So just to explain the case, Zoe, this was bought by a 20-year-old woman identified as Kayleigh, and jurors have found that Meta and Google intentionally built addictive social media platforms that harm the 20-year-old's mental health.

21:01Both companies have said they disagreed with the verdict and would appeal, but when somebody's awarded$6 million on the back of something like this, does it feel like a game-changer to you? I think it was, as you say, when the news brought last night, it does feel like it's going to have an impact, given that they were saying half of young Americans use social media platforms as a daily basis, which could be perceived to be kind of addictive and that kind of side. So I think it's how far this is going to spread and the potential impact. But I mean, financially, that's not a huge hit for the companies.

21:35But if you multiply that over potentially further cases, then it could have a financial impact. And as you see, obviously, the look doesn't look from the narrative about this as well and what their products are potentially doing. So I think it's a story that's got momentum behind it, given the huge appeal of these platforms. And it's whether or not we see further cases coming. And I think we just have to monitor events. But the share prices yesterday didn't seem to react much to the news. Let's hear a little bit from our reporter, Regan Morris, who was inside the courtroom and paints a picture of the reaction to the verdict.

22:15We will get to Regan in a minute. We'll hear a little moment as we dig out that sort of colourful from the courtroom. Kevin, I wonder what you make of this one. I often, when I sort of see the way, you know, other families are dealing with social media with their kids. And I am almost grateful that my kids are very young. And I see friends of mine and other members of the family having to go through this with, you know, older children. and people who are into adulthood now have gone through it themselves, thinking, you know, what has been going on with these big tech companies for so long? These big questions that people have felt have needed to be asked of them.

22:59And this, when there's a court case like this, it sort of gives you a glimpse of what some of the answers might be. Yeah, well, as a parent of a teenager, I have direct experience of challenging social media. so yeah definitely this this i'm watching this with interest because obviously we don't know how far it will spread as i just said and whether the you know whether it will be appealed but if it proceeds and then there are further cases it could well force these companies to start putting you know better protections in that i think has been a worry for everybody really in the background brilliant as they are um there needs to be more protections when you say brilliant as they are while also you know i appreciate you entrepreneur boss yourself and you are a parent a brilliant what what's the brilliant as they are compared to having to deal with this in your home you know i think it's hard for me because i didn't grow up in that social media world so easily but that connectivity that ability to be you know connected to your peers connected to your friend groups on an almost constant basis does have some advantages does have some you know strengths in support when you looked at times like covid they were quite invaluable to keep you know particularly in our house keep our kids connected to you know their peer groups so so they do have some really you know brilliant things to offer but the flip side is they've got to be responsible and make sure that kids in particular are protected from those appealing and sort of, yeah, challenging side effects that they can have.

24:43Zoe, irrespective of whether there are more court cases and bigger costs and the financial aspect of the potential impact on these tech giants, which clearly, you know, they've got the deepest pockets of any businesses in the world. So it was notable the share price of this didn't budge. But talking about the reality of it, the use of it, the reputation, are there any reputational risks? Are investors watching that actually if people start to feel a little bit more motivated to turn away from these tech platforms? They see a court case like this and families discuss the way we are right now, what should we do with our kids?

25:24that actually over the years it might be a turning off from this thing that we've had turned on for decades. Absolutely, and I think if it changes behavioural patterns, or as you say, we see parents deciding that they're going to limit access and the number of people using the platform gets reduced at that stage, it can also form behaviours for later life. If you're not using it in childhood or your teenage years, then it might also stop people using it. So I think it could have an impact on the longer term trends and longer term usage. And as you say, if we do see tighter controls, that could certainly be a positive if it helps.

26:07But I think this is it feels a bit of a game changer just now. And I think and what's going to happen and how these big platform providers respond is going to be key here. 85058 your thoughts on that please feels like a big talking point for us again uh on another day the messages keep coming from people about national savings and investment thank you so much for them we will be delving deeper as the days go on no doubt uh veronica lincolnshire says at the moment i'm sitting here listening with concern over nsn i i personally recently retired i've used nsn i since settling my mortgage a few years back solely on the premium bonds account as a source of tax-free interest outside of other sources like ISIS, etc.

26:48I've maximized my limit now. Should I be worried? I need more data. Please, Veronica, you and many others as well. I think at this moment in time, it's going to take a few days to figure out the pensions minister's talking a little bit later about what exactly this issue is. The Telegraph have highlighted it's to do with bereavement services, but this is part of the problem that they're going to need to get on top of, of reassuring people of what's going on. there's been a specific issue raised we'll hear more about what's going on at NSNI as the day goes on that's it from Wake Up To Money Wake Up To Money from BBC 5 Live that's it from Wake Up To Money you can download the podcast every Monday to Friday so please make sure you subscribe we'd also love it if you left us a review when you do get in touch keep the conversation going anytime as well on social media use the hashtag Wake Up To Money New teams.

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