Over one in five in the UK ignore bank statements

MONDAY, JULY 03, 2006

If you believe a recent survey by the Royal Bank of Scotland, 23% of people never open their bank statements. If you think of the number of people in the UK with a current account, that corresponds to over 7 million bank statements going straight into the bin every month.

It's not surprising then that there are so many debt-related problems in the UK. It's not just the scale of personal debt, exceeding 1.1 trillion pounds, there's also a perceived problem of people not taking control of their personal finances.

For example it was widely reported in that one in five people were being hit by late loan repayment charges during 2005. That meant that nearly £500 million was spent on penalties for late payments of credit cards, overdrafts, though some were paying penalties for early repayment of their debts.

At that time the figures were blamed on people's hectic lifestyles and people not making time to keep their personal finances in order, especially with respect to their debts.

It seems that the trend is continuing well into 2006.