IBTimes UK editor-in-chief George Pitcher speaks to Edmund Shing, global equity portfolio manager at BCS Asset Management, about why continued curse of ultra-low interest rates mean that savers should give their cash a workout.

Six years into supposed economic recovery after the seismic shock of the global financial crisis, the FTSE 100 index has gained 80% from the 2009 low to the present date.

Whilst you might have thought that retail investors would have been enjoying this impressive stock market performance. But in fact, not nearly as much as you might have thought, because according to the OECD, UK households have continued to hold very high levels of cash – some 29% of all their financial assets (excluding housing), in common with retail investors across Europe and Japan.

Shing advises turning to the stock market, where dividend payments have in general been growing consistently since 2009. He recommends Stockopedia's stock screening service to identify UK large-cap companies that offer:

  1. an attractive combination of good value and quality (based on a combination of different valuation, profitability and risk measures), as represented by the Stockopedia Quality Value Rank (scored out of a maximum 100), and
  2. a high dividend yield (paid half-yearly or quarterly) of well over 5%
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