Money

The offenders - an unholy alliance of banks, building societies, investment managers and insurers - are guilty of abandoning tens of thousands of their customers each year. These individuals and their families are desperate for leeway while dealing with illness - anything from cancer, a heart attack or stroke, to debilitating mental problems. One sufferer who did get help was Steve Lister, pictured with wife Sue, left, and his three daughters - he had crucial surgery thanks to a free benefit he initially forgot came with an income protection plan.

Harman wishes she had purchased a property in Portugal before she had children, when the exchange rate was better and prices were cheaper. Instead, the mother of two has ploughed her money into property in South London, bagging herself a £1.5 million investment portfolio in just 14 years. Her home in Surrey is a five-bedroom house with a swimming pool and is worth close to £1 million.

The demands of the cut-throat world of high-end style mean that Victoria's brand, while immensely popular with the fashion-obsessed, needs cash. The label doubled in size annually for the first three years it published financial accounts, hitting £15.4 million in 2012. But in recent years growth has hit a ceiling, rising to almost £37 million in 2015 but then falling back 1 per cent the following year. Experts point out that establishing a global luxury brand requires heavy investment in the early years and Victoria's label has made a loss in four of the eight years it filed accounts, with red ink of £8.5 million in 2016.

The Chancellor asked for ideas for inheritance tax to be simplified this week, but should we even have a death tax at all? We look at how it works, how to avoid it and whether it should be cut. Also on the podcast, the problem of interest-only timebomb mortgages, investing in emerging markets and how to buy bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as safely as possible.

Rod Stewart may be a superstar, but he shares one problem with many of us mere mortals. He cannot sell his house.Rod first put Wood House, his 25-acre Essex mansion, on the market in July 2016 for £7.5 million. Nobody thought that price was serious so he dropped it by £550,000 that November, writes Fred Redwood.

News of an inheritance tax overhaul has led to an outpouring of helpful suggestions from experts - and top of the wishlist is ditching or revising George Osborne's new property rules. Chancellor Philip Hammond is also being warned against any sneaky new ploys to raise revenues from people passing on wealth to loved ones.

Our mother passed away in 2013 leaving the estate to be divided between siblings.The time now has come where we feel that it is time to sell, but my brother still lives there. As the executor how can we make this legal without losing our individual share of the estate? Paul Handford, lawyer at Which! Legal (pictured), explains the options.

Emerging markets have not been regarded as a hot ticket by investors for some time, but those who did invest have been richly rewarded. Can that continue? We ask Gary Greenberg, manager of Hermes Global Emerging Markets, the top fund in the sector over five years, which has almost doubled investors money over that time.

In the 21st Century, job interviews are just as likely to be conducted outside the confines of an office as they are inside - and that may terrify some. In the latest in our interview cheat sheet series, we take a look at how to tackle tricky interviews in locations outside of the office.

Whatever his real motivation, the Chancellor had a point in his call to put inheritance tax under review - it has a stupidly complicated set of rules and reliefs and is only getting worse. So, if the Chancellor really wants to simplify IHT, here is an idea: get rid of all the fiddly reliefs, keep a tax-free threshold and cut inheritance tax to a flat 20% above it.

A 12-sided £1 coin with a minting error is set to sell for thousands of pounds at an upcoming auction. The coin, appears to have been struck using the new dies on the now obsolete single metal blank of its predecessor. It means the coins appears as entirely gold in colour, rather than the bi-metallic colour it should be. There is already a pre-bid of £900.

In a boost to Donald Trump and his plans to turbocharge the economy, the number in work rose by 200,000 in January after a 160,000 increase in December. At the same time, average hourly earnings were 2.9 per cent than higher than a year earlier, the biggest increase since June 2009.

It seems there is no end yet in sight to Neil Woodford's 'incredibly painful' period after his funds took a big hit from beleaguered Capita today. FTSE-250 listed outsourcing group Capita has seen its share price plunge by 45 per cent today after issuing a profits warning for the year ahead. Woodford has been a long-term backer of Capita  and holds the stock in his Woodford Equity Income and Income Focus funds.

The Carphone Warehouse in Scarborough's Brunswick shopping centre is bustling with customers. It's Friday afternoon and around a dozen shoppers are crowded around brightly-lit displays that show off the latest Apple and Samsung smartphones, while two shop assistants struggle to keep up at the tills. This is where Jamie Jamieson, who lives in the seaside resort, first tested a system which he claims can defeat identity fraud. Fourteen years ago, Jamie, 69, began using his thumbprint to verify his identity. He added a note to his credit file stating that any application for a financial deal in his name must not be accepted unless it has his thumbprint on it.

Imagine a house with almost every conceivable luxury and this property for sale in one of the most exclusive parts of the country must surely be close to the mark. The brand new home in Surrey's Weybridge is called Whitelands, and has some standout features that won't be found in your average detached family home.

Today you can buy all manner of tweaks for your car - from alloy wheels to 'car bras' which protect the bonnet and badge from the elements. But insurers tend to take a dim view of such additions. Relatively small changes to your car can have a big effect on the price you pay for insurance. From a non-standard exhaust, to adding a sat nav, and even the month you renew matters.

Business angel Andy Yates and This is Money have been on a mission to find great entrepreneurs from all walks of life. Now the results are in and we are proud to announce the winners. The hard work begins now to turn entrepreneurial dreams into reality. There is no guarantee of success, but we can guarantee the journey will continue to be exciting.

Energy salesmen are being offered commissions of up to £50,000 a year to convince homeowners to install smart energy meters. Our investigation found staff are being recruited to knock on doors and phone customers on behalf of major energy companies. Job advertisements posted online state that they will be selling new digital smart meters.

Our Virgin landline has not worked for more than two months and after receiving one letter from Virgin, we have had nothing since and it has not addressed the issue of compensation. My husband is 86 and in very poor health. I am 76. When he needed to go to hospital with a suspected heart attack, we had to use a mobile phone because our landline wasn't working. The mobile was also not working properly - this caused considerable delay. It has also proved impossible for people to contact us, which meant we missed a hospital appointment. When I try to contact Virgin, we go round in circles. My friends and family have also tried on our behalf.

The light at the end of a very long tunnel could finally be in sight for savers. Two Bank of England schemes giving banks and building societies a cheap source of money are set to end, and lenders could once again have to look to savers. A rise in Bank of England base rate from its current 0.5 per cent to 0.75 per cent is on the cards for later this year - which will also work in savers' favour.

Officials are set to probe everything from submitting returns and paying tax, to making IHT-free gifts and estate planning - but there is no indication of whether the 40 per cent 'death tax' levy could be cut. Chancellor Philip Hammond calls the current inheritance tax regime 'particularly complex' in a letter to the Office of Tax Simplification/

A stern warning from the UK financial services watchdog says there are 1.67 million people in Britain with either a part or full interest-only mortgage - equivalent to one in five homeowners in the UK. Many of these borrowers are coming up to the end of their 25-year terms and have no idea how they'll repay their mortgage.

As investors we're constantly told that 'markets can go up as well as down'. But if you've forgotten the last part, it's probably because 2017 was a year of almost all up and very little down. But there's no guarantee that this year will be more of the same. With the era of cheap money being wound down, the spectre of inflation and political worries, volatility may very well return with a vengeance.

Investors of popular funds are paying up to three times more than the ticketed prices once transaction and platform costs are added, according new research by the Lang Cat. New rules that have forced fund managers to disclose these and shown how some are far more expensive than was previously claimed - eating into investors' returns.

Annuity rates could finally start to increase in 2018 and their popularity grow once again, says expert Billy Burrows of financial adviser Better Retirement. He explains why rates have been low for so long, and what might happen to boost them again, including a 'good Brexit' that keeps the economy steady and nudges interest rates higher.

To clear the average national household debt of £13,000 at 6% interest with a monthly repayment of £100 will take around 17 years. There are, however, plenty of simple ways to make significant savings on your regular spending that could clear your debt - or boost your savings - in less than a year. This is Money's top 50 - updated - money-saving tips may appear light-hearted but are deadly serious.

Choosing the right DIY platform is crucial but a wealth of choice and changes to charges have left many investors scratching their heads. We pick some of the best. We also highlight why investing in an Isa makes sense, as it should protect your hopefully growing investments from tax forever.

The amount you can save into a pension ultimately depends on what you can afford - but the longer you leave it the more you will need to save. We tend to put ambitious targets on our hoped-for income in retirement and then underestimate how much we will need to set aside to achieve that. So how much should you save?

All nine Bank of England policymakers voted to leave interest rates unchanged in December as they said inflation should start easing back next year. The Bank also said that different economic indicators suggested growth was likely to have slowed down as they year ends.