Britain’s banks and building societies store more than our cash in their vaults; they hold all the basic information that any opportune fraudster could want. Some of them have been reckless with that responsibility.

There is little use in you or I taking the usual precautions against financial fraud if a quick trawl through the rubbish outside your branch can produce the key to our finances. You can shred all correspondence, adopt that strange hunchback crouch over a cash machine and change all your internet passwords every week, but this is all of little value without the vigilance of your bank. Last year the Information Commissioner revealed that banks were guilty of filling rubbish bags with the fraudster’s version of treasure maps.

It is heartening, therefore, to know that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has taken a belligerent stance on the issue. This week it dished out its first fine for the inadequate protection of customers’ information. Nationwide, whose failings were exposed after an employee’s laptop was stolen, will have to pay a fine of £980,000.

In some ways, the singling out of Nationwide is unfortunate. After the theft of the laptop, it conscientiously warned its members about the possible security lapse, which prompted a visit from the FSA’s new financial crime team. To judge by the Information Commissioner’s comments, it seems likely that the FSA’s crimebusters would have found similar failings at many of Nationwide's rivals.

As technology gathers pace, the ways of storing our details, and of getting at that information, become ever more sophisticated. But it is a mistake to think that all financial crime is about ingenious computer geeks hacking into a bank’s database. Yes, the FSA’s crime team will be checking the software that banks use to encrypt data about us, but it will also take a look at the locks on the doors.

It should be in the banks’ interests to protect us against financial crime, as they often end up footing the bill. But the FSA’s new stance will help to point them in the right direction. This is unlikely to be the last fine and public chastisement that our big banks will have to face.

First-time property buyers may yet have the last laugh

At what point do first-time buyers admit that they simply cannot afford to buy properties? Is it when the ex-council flat they are eyeing up turns out to be next door to a crack den? Is it when a garage is the only place that appears when they enter their price range on a property website? Or is it when they sit down and contemplate seriously one of the extreme first-time buyer mortgage deals now on the market?

Leeds Building Society has launched a new mortgage aimed at first-time buyers. It offers multiples of five times salary and is available to those with only a 5 per cent deposit. Starting on an already steep rate of 6.25 per cent, it then tracks the base rate.

At the same time, Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, gave warning this week that further interest rate rises are still on the agenda. A first-time buyer who takes out a loan like the Leeds deal would be extremely vulnerable in this interest rate environment. Just because someone will lend you so much money that a slight tweak in economic conditions will poleaxe you does not mean that you should borrow the cash.

It is a hugely tricky subject to opine on for those of us lucky enough to be homeowners already. My generation of homeowners missed the truly barmy rises of the 1990s and still regret not being born five years earlier. Today’s young renters hate my generation, as they contemplate the inexorable upward march of property prices. Research by Nationwide has found that a typical first-time-buyer property has increased in value by £14,000 over the past year alone.

This week’s report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors pointed to a continuing shortage of properties, which will continue to act as a fillip to prices. But there are counter signs which suggest that the market is displaying all the classic signs of a bubble. If the bubble bursts, the current band of priced-out renters will be the ones feeling hugely smug. The losers will be found among my tranche of property buyers, who bought at the crest of a market which seemed set to swell indefinitely.

Towering teenage debt has me worried on two counts

It has happened. I am in shock, even though it was obvious that it would come to me eventually, as it does to everyone. I have just caught myself thinking the phrase: “It wasn’t like that in my day.”

Before I go to check for new wrinkles, a grey beard and any other signs that I am mutating into my father, I should mention that the thought referred to figures on teenage debt. More than half of British teenagers have been in debt by the time they reach the age of 17, according to research from the Personal Finance Education Group, the charity that promotes finance in schools. In our credit-tolerant culture, where adults have built a debt mountain of more than £1,000 billion, teens are preparing for a life in the red.

These teenagers believe that overdrafts are free money and credit cards are their friends. We need to find teachers who can teach personal finance in the classroom now. And I need to download an Arctic Monkeys album or some other popular beat combo that the kidz are listening to.