UK Interest Rates might change soon

A recent survey of some of the leading experts on the UK economy has shown that the vast majority of them believe that interest rates will not begin to rise until 2016 at the earliest, with some thinking 2017 will be the year when they start to rise once more.

According to freedebtadvice-uk.com over half of the expert panel also believed that the Bank of England would increase their base rate from the current record lows of 0.5% by at least 3 times to 1.5% before the end of 2015.

The rate set by the Bank of England has been at its current record low of 0.5% for over two years, just one example of how seriously the UK economy was impacted by the global recession. Whether or not the rate being this low is a good thing depends on who you are. If you are a saver, someone who puts their money into savings accounts with banks and building societies to gain a no-risk return, then 0.5% is not good at all and makes saving almost pointless. If you are someone with a mortgage or someone seeking a mortgage, then this rate is definitely a good thing as it keeps your mortgage repayments lower than ever before.

One member of the panel believed that by the end of 2015 the rate would rise to 2.5%, but he was the only member to believe it wuold rise to this level.

This is a marked difference from only a few months ago, when over half of the industry experts surveyed thought that the bank rate would start to rise again this month (August).

So what does this all mean for the average resident in the UK??

Well one particular area where this news has an effect is mortgages. The belief expressed in the above mentioned survey that interest rates would remain low and relatively static has resulted in many mortgage providers lowering the rates charged on their various mortgage products, both fixed rate mortgages and tracker mortgages.

However the other side of the coin is not so attractive. It has been estimated that as a result of this fall in interest rates and inflation moving in the way that it has done, the value of savings held within the UK has fallen by an estimated £50bn.

It seems like whatever the Bank of England does, there will be a lot of angry people with something to say.