Economy

As a wave of financial services providers launch onto the Net a new MORI poll commissioned by Interactive Investor and Screentrade, shows that since April an extra 15,000 people a week approximately have been using the Net to arrange their finances. In total, approximately 1.8 million people say they have used the Internet for banking or buying financial products.

The craze for sending text messages from mobile phones which has hit the nation has been secretly embraced by some of our top business people. Twenty nine per cent of the "Captains' of Industry" surveyed by MORI on BT Cellnet's behalf say they send and receive text messages from their mobile phone and a further nineteen per cent said they would find the service useful. Three per cent even admit to using the service to receive latest football scores and lottery results. The number of SMS messages sent in the UK each month has now topped 100 million (source: Mobile Data Association).

Mark Ransford, spokesperson for screentrade, MISYS's on-line insurance service, said: "In theory this should stoke up the Internet boom even further as it will be even easier to buy on-line and add further benefits to managing your money on-line. We were the first provider to offer consumers the chance to buy insurance on-line and have been calling for electronic signatures for a number of months."

Here are some questions about the price of various products.

3.1 million people are using the net for their day to day personal finances and an extra 2.7 million have logged on to the net in total since Christmas, according to a MORI poll commissioned by Screentrade-unions, the Internet insurance service, and Interactive Investor, the leading personal finance site.

Nearly two thirds (64 per cent) of the population have yet to be convinced that over the long term shares are a better of form of investment than savings accounts, according to MORI research published today.

SCOTS are warming to shares as an investment with the number of share clubs in Scotland rising from 69 to 203 in two years.

A survey for the Marketing & Communication Agency by MORI shows how staff attitudes are affecting consumer behaviour

Consumers Slam Internet For Money Matters