Cosmetic Developments in Deposit Protection

The three deposit protection schemes have been actively updating their public presence of late and it seems to be paying off. My Deposits has just unveiled a very swish new website which has garnered them some good publicity and looks very user focussed and clean. TDS have recently received five accreditations from the Plain Language Commission for some of their key dispute documents which, to be honest, needed a bit of simplifying. All credit to them for improving their service. The DPS, meanwhile

have brought in a virtual assistant on their website, called Ask Emma. Although I haven’t had cause to ask Emma anything yet, giving customers alternative means to contact the organisation can be no bad thing. Please leave a comment if you have asked Emma anything and let us know whether she was helpful.

The fact that the three feel the need to constantly work on their appearance, as it were, highlights that deposit protection is still a very competitive business. It seems as though the doomsayers who have until late predicted the imminent demise of the insurance backed schemes were wide of the mark, but then, as far as I could tell, they were much the same doomsayers who predicted that the custodial scheme would crash in the first year.

The fact is that as long as agents want to sit on the interest from the deposit and can get away with passing the insurance premiums on to the landlords, the insurance based schemes are on a reasonably firm footing. I for one am impressed that the DPS, which is funded by the interest on the deposits it holds, has managed to keep going through such a long period of rock-bottom interest rates. Surely their contingency planning couldn’t have foreseen what is a sea change in fiscal policy. All power to them for adapting to a rapidly changing environment.

http://www.adrsolution.co.uk