A new scheme aimed at improving company pension schemes and making them attractive to employees has been launched.

The National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), which represents around 1,200 funds in the UK, will award a Pension Quality Mark to employers who meet a set of minimum standards, including having a minimum employer contribution rate of 6%.

The move is designed to help workers better assess the quality of their employer’s pension scheme, as well as to improve the schemes on offer and increase take-up.

In what is a tough climate for pensions, nine out of 10 companies have now replaced their final salary pension schemes to new joiners and replaced them with less generous defined contribution versions.

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UK households saw their income drop by an average of £31,000 last year because of the credit crunch and recession, new figures reveal.

A study for the BBC found that falling house prices were responsible for a £422 billion decrease in the value of the UK’s housing wealth, while falling share prices reduced other financial wealth by £393 billion.

According to calculations by the Halifax bank, this was the first such drop in household wealth since 2001. The bank worked out that the accumulated wealth of the UK’s 26,652,000 homes fell by a total of £815 billion  in the course of last year as the economic downturn undermined house prices and stock market investments - an overall drop of 12%.

“It is a huge drop to happen in one year,” said Martin Ellis, chief economist at the Halifax.

“But we have had the biggest house price fall yet seen in just one year, combined with a fall in equity prices,” he added.

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A Nottinghamshire entrepreneur who featured in the Channel 4 series Secret Millionaire has been declared bankrupt.

Property Tycoon Chek Whyte is believed to have debts of around £30 million, and had attempted to make arrangements to continue trading whilst paying off his debts. He was issued with a bankruptcy order following a petition by creditor Halls Furnishings Ltd, which trades as Loft Interiors of Manchester.

The self-made millionaire appeared on the Channel 4 series in 2007 and donated money to a number of good causes in Salford, Greater Manchester.

Whyte made his fortune in the property and construction industry, renovating dilapidated listed buildings such as Colwick Hall and Clifton Hall in Nottingham.

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City professionals employed by banks to help their clients avoid tax could be fined by the Financial Services Authority or struck off its register.

The financial watchdog is considering whether it should play a role in enforcing the government’s new code of conduct, under which banks are required not to sell products that enable tax avoidance.

Hector Sans, chief executive of the FSA, said that the regulator would discuss the topic in its autumn consultation on the FSA’s “fit and proper” test.

The test is used to assess whether City workers are “fit and proper” in terms of their professional conduct. If the FSA deems them to have failed the test, it can fine them or strike them off the register.

The FSA has not yet published details on how it will handle the voluntary code, which the watchdog predicts will be in the consultation stages till September. The government is asking all banks to sign up to the code, warning that those who refuse to, or who do not conform to the “spirit” of the current tax laws are opening themselves to greater scrutiny from HM Revenue & Customs.

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Two UK banks have begun screening customers’ transactions in order to combat so-called boiler room scams.

Boiler room fraud involves criminals ringing potential investors and persuading them to buy shares which are effectively worthless.

The Financial Services authority estimates that up to 30,000 a year are falling victim to these scams.

HSBC and Barclays bank are now suspending transactions to known boiler room firms, using a list of hundreds of questionable companies published by the FSA. The regulator says that these companies are not authorised to trade, and pose a high risk to consumers.

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Buy to let landlords are losing their properties at over three times the rate of homeowners who live at the property, research has shown.

According to figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, 1,700 buy-to let properties were repossessed by lenders in the first quarter of this year. However, when a receiver of rent is included, this figure jumps to 4,100.

A receiver of rent is employed by a lender to collect rent when a landlord defaults on his mortgage payments. This process allows the tenant to remain in their property instead of losing their home, and gives the lender time to decide what to do with the property. The mortgage interest can be offset by the rent.

In the first three months of this year 2,400 receivers of rent were appointed by lenders - eight times the number in the first quarter of 2008. This year 0.35% of buy-to-let properties were repossessed by lenders, compared with 0.11% of owner-occupied properties.

One reason for this is that many landlords bought expensive properties, but tenants were not prepared to pay rents high enough to cover the mortgage.

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Low-paid workers in the UK are less likely to belong to a pension scheme than their higher-paid colleagues, a report has found.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 21% of men and 32% of women earning less than £300 a week were in employer pension schemes. 1.7 million men are in full time jobs which pay less than £300 a week, compared to 1.9 million women.

One reason that a higher proportion of low-paid women contribute to a company pension scheme than men is that more women work in the public sector, where membership of pension schemes is higher.

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Thousands of private landlords who own buy-to-let properties are struggling to meet their mortgage repayments during the current recession, new figures have revealed.

A report from the ratings agency Moody’s released yesterday shows that almost 4% of landlords are at least three months behind on repayments, compared with just under 1% a year ago. The number of buy-to-let properties repossessed in the first quarter of this year had also increased slightly to 0.18%, up from 0.13% in the same period last year.

There are around a million buy-to-let landlords in Britain.

In a speech to the mortgage industry yesterday, Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, warned that the buy-to-let market could produce “significantly higher arrears and defaults than the owner-occupier segment “. He warned that whilst repossessions of buy-to-let properties were unlikely to reach the levels seen in the early 90s, an increase in the number of landlords defaulting on mortgage payments could result in significant losses to the industry.

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Chancellor Alistair Darling has announced a new top tax rate of 50% which will come into effect in April 2010 - a year earlier than predicted. The 50p tax rate replaces the planned 45p new top rate announced in November’s pre-budget report and will apply only to the 2% earning over £150,000 a year, who will also see tax relief on their pension contributions curbed.

The chancellor attempted to draw a clear line between Labour and the Conservatives as he announced the 50p income tax band for the highest earners after unveiling a stark Budget report on the state of the UK economy.

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British homes are more affordable than they have been in nearly seven years, according to new figures from the Halifax.

The Halifax study revealed that the total relative cost of housing had reached its lowest point in the last seven years thanks to falling house prices and interest rates at a record low.

The study measured affordability of housing by looking at the proportion of disposable income spent on mortgage payments. On average, mortgage payments equalled 31% of disposable income in the first quarter of this year, compared with a staggering 48% of income from July to October 2007.

The Halifax said that rise in affordability was mainly due to the recent decline in house prices as well as historically low interest rates.

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