The financial industry still doesn’t get how to treat its customers

The FCA wants credit card companies to help prevent their customers getting in debt that they can’t get out of. But they really shouldn’t need to be told, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

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Credit cards are, for many people, a lousy way to spend

Credit cards can be nasty things. They might be of some use to those who want a painless way to borrow money for the very short term (ie those who can pay it back within a month or two and pay little or no interest on it). But for almost everyone else they are a lousy way to spend.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.