Core benefits usually include annual leave, pensions, private medical insurance and death-in- service cover. Non-core benefits could include mortgage assistance, workplace nurseries, health club membership, extended maternity leave, group legal coverage, sabbaticals, orproduct and travel discounts.Mike Elworthy, a consultant with William Mercer, the pay and benefits expert, says: “Take a married couple Both are working and both have medical cover. Fans of flexible benefit plans insist that a properly organised scheme can improve the well-being of the workforce, build team spirit and boost productivity.In a typical “flexplan”, the company insists on a core of benefits but allows the employee some discretion over others. Until recently, most have taken a rigid approach to benefits – a case of “Here’s the car keys, whether you want the car or not”.But a revolution is going on in corporate culture. Instead of a fixed range of benefits, companies are beginning to offer employees a menu, from which they can pick and mix, or even “buy” and “sell” benefits.It means a 25-year-old female might choose nursery care and mortgage assistance, while a 59-year-old male can opt for higher pensions and better medical cover. It also means that employees are not taxed on benefits they do not want.Employers like it because it generally costs no more and makes employees far more aware of the cost and value of benefits the company provides.

WOULD you swap a week’s holiday for an extra pounds 500 on your salary? Or exchange the company car for child-care vouchers?

This is not some new parlour game but the sort of choice that employees will face if US-style flexible benefit programmes become the norm in Britain.
Companies here already spend billions on perks such as pensions, private medical insurance and company cars. Its move, coupled with earlier ones from Bradford & Bingley, cut that margin so that savers did not lose out from the cuts.Surprise, surprise, last week’s mortgage cuts by other lenders have not so far been followed by savings reductions This is a welcome move. But it raises the question: who was right then?q Steve Lodge is on holiday.. Yet what Nationwide did was to advance the argument that the margin between savings and borrowers’ rates was too high. When Nationwide cut its mortgage rate last month to what was then a record for high street building societies – 6.99 per cent – other lenders scoffed at the idea.This was a marketing stunt, they claimed. It is not yet certain that FirstMortgage will be able to put together the right package, but full marks to the company for trying.Borrowers should considerwhat they are being asked to hold on for when they decide to stay with the Halifax, Alliance & Leicester or Woolwich.Is it wise to lose out on a mortgage deal that could save you pounds 3,000 on a pounds 50,000 mortgage over three years in order to pick up pounds 1,000 in shares next year? I don’t think so.One final point. One small lender, FirstMortgage, is looking at finding a way round the problem, in such a way that borrowers could leave the bare minimum with the original lender and move the rest of their loan elsewhere.

Put simply: you may not get such a good deal if you wait, as our story on page 18 demonstrates.Thirdly, there is a pool of borrowers who would move if they could but are unwilling to lose the chance of a shares handout from those societies either de-mutualising or being taken over.Here, there may be a solution in sight. The first is that despite last week’s rate cuts and the seeming revival of the market, buying a house is still risky when your main purpose for doing so is as an investment.The second lesson is for anyone tempted to wait before fixing a mortgage at a better rate in a few months’ time. Only 12 months ago, mortgage rates were on the up, while the market was in the doldrums, with prices heading relentlessly downwards.There are several lessons to be learnt. Meanwhile, for those trapped in negative equity, Halifax Building Society announced that house prices rose by 0.9 per cent in February.
What a difference a year makes. ANOTHER good week formortgage borrowers, after lenders announced 0.25 per cent off the cost of home loans, down to record lows not seen since the early 1960s. A programme could, for example, scan questions, combine similar ones, and forward them to the relevant academic.Technology of this kind, which makes it easier and more cost-effective to teach large courses of students distributed over a wide area, is ultimately what KMI and the Open University is all about.o Readers can visit KMI’s Internet site at http://kmi.open. ac.uk/nnn.

The process now takes a computer about one-and-a-half minutes.Professor Eisenstadt sees huge potential for such systems in compiling the knowledge held within a business, which he describes as a firm’s “intellectual capital”. “If you can understand what a company knows, you’re into some very interesting territory,” he says.By the same token, intelligent software can help a limited number of tutors handle queries from a large number of students. Luigi works regardless of its users’ computers, and will soon accept fax or phone responses.KMI has used the same technology for a lift manufacturer, which previously spent weeks calculating constraints for a new elevator design. Someone wishing to organise a meeting sends out possible times to colleagues by e-mail. A computer compiles the responses and circulates an optimum time to participants.