Lloyds Classic Plus 6% - is your interest correct this month?

It's not working out.

I'm awaiting next month's interest deposit to see if LTSB(HBOS) are able to correctly multiply two numbers together.

In the meantime I'm at the mercy of LTSB buying out another solvent company made insolvant due to their share price....

Google interrobang for the key that's missing on this keyboard to express my opinion of this.

I queried my June interest and received in reply an explanation how daily interest is calculated:

daily interest = (cleared funds * gross rate) / (100 * 365)

As their calculations did not tally with mine, I sent a letter with my calculations, to which I received no reply. To my second letter I received an interesting response: a Lloyds TSB Customer Account Recalculation.

This report details the daily recalculated interest and applicable rates from May to September. The report shows one row per day. Each row shows the statement and the cleared balance. There are a further 2 columns showing
the reworked statement and cleared balances, which take the interest correction of the previous month into consideration. Interest is accumulated for successive days with the same cleared balance.

• The interest period does not run from the first to the last of the month. The period starts on the day following the first working day of the month and ends on the first working day of the following month, which is the day the interest is credited to the account.
• gross rates: Classic Plus rate = 3.93%; higher Classic Plus rate = 5.841%
• Accumulated daily interest is shown with a precision of 4 decimal places.
• cleared balances account for cheque clearing times and the extra days of interest for BACS pay-outs as per T&Cs 13.2 (a).

I spot-checked the calculations and I am getting some weird discrepancies, which I can't explain away by dividing and multiplying in a different order or rounding at different precisions. The only explanation I can think of is that their program might use floating point arithmetik to do the calculations and then convert back to decimal.

I am also not convinced that they are using the reworked balance as input for their recalculations, see examples 4+5 below. Unfortunately, I have not kept much money in my my account as I do not trust their interest calculations; therefore discrepancies are very small.


#, statement balance, reworked cleared balance, days, rate, TSB recalc, my calc

1) £671.48, £671.48, 5, 4.17%: 0.3833, 0.383571
2) £511.88, £511.88, 1, 3.93%: 0.0550, 0.055147
3) £3.34, £3.59, 7, 5.841%: 0.0034, 0.0040208
4) £2.01, £2.50, 7, 5.841: 0.0022, 0.0028004
5) £791.45, £791.94, 3, 5.841: 0.3797, 0.380196

Example 3: even using the statement balance yields a higher value than TSB's 0.0034. I have no idea how they got there.
Example 4: using the statement balance results in 0.0022512
Example 5: using the statement balance results in 0.3799605


It would be interesting if people with bigger balances than me requested the report and checked their calculations. It's ludicrous if you can't trust the interest calculations of a major bank or any bank for that matter. It's just a simple multiply and divide!


Above report can be obtained from:

Chelmsford SC (308794)
1 Legg Street
Chelmsford
Essex CM1 1JS

PM me for a contact name.

Another phone call to 0500 179050 yesterday. It now turns out that the problem with my account is more serious than the general system fault which affects the others. In fact, the guy told me that the system is not registering me paying in at least £1,000 in August which he admitted that by looking at my statement that this is the case. He said that my case has now been escalated as a 'Complaint' and a 'dedicated Customer Care Team' is going to get it resolved.

Arrangements are now being made to transfer this account to a different financial institution!

My August interest adjustment appeared on my online statement on 4 September.

This morning, just four weeks later, I received a letter telling me about it and that I would 'see it on my next statement'.

Apparently I was 'one of a small number of customers who were affected'. I guess it must just all happen that they are all MoneySavers, then!

I got the same letter today and was paid the extra interest on 4 September also - spoke to them just now and it seems the correct interest is going to be paid later today for September - lets hope so!!