halifax international regular saver

Initial problems,

Applied online - at the end it asks you to print a declaration and a Standing order mandate and send it to them - but no option to print them:mad:

There was an option to get them to print and send to me to be signed, but I didn't select it and now the page has gone.

Looks like I have to print and complete the manual application form as well as filling everything in online! Will call them to see what I do next!

I opened one in April at 7%. Oddly, when I called today to close it so that I could reopen at the new 10% rate, I was told that their systems show that I am getting the 10% rate (they are going to post me some proof of this with a covering letter).

So they have either made a deliberate decision to apply the new 10% rate from yesterday to existing accounts or have made some sort of mistake on their systems and unintentially applied the 10% rate to existing 7% accounts (either is possible as the Halifax International Regular Saver was only launched in April, so they probably have a small customer base and a high number of them would have been in the same position as me and immediately closing their 7% accounts).

Answering the original question, the 75% deposit protection is more than mitigated for me by the fact that this is a 1 year term account, the reward of a very high rate and the knowledge that if Halifax International was allowed to go to the wall I would not be out on the streets. Anyone who is in a position where the loss of 25% of their investment would be a serious problem for them should probably look elsewhere.

As ctdctd said, the certified copy of the passport is a bit of a nuisance but Halifax branches will do this for you without any problem (although my branch oddly refused point blank to follow the Halifax International own printed instructions for certification and just gave the basic stamped certification - wasn't a problem for Halifax International though).

I've looked at the Isle of Man depositors' protection scheme - it has two problems.

1) You are only covered to maximum 75% of 20K
2) Compensation is paid out of levies collected from other banks in the Isle of Man. Levies are collected at a maximum of £250,000 per bank per year. As there are a limited number of banks which pay levies, it may take many years for compensation to be paid to depositors.

It seems they wait for a bank to go bust and only then start collecting 250K PA from the other banks. There are about 40 banks in the list so £10 million a year. If only 10,000 depositors lost 10K each, it would take 10 years to get it back.

http://www.fsc.gov.im/investor/dep_comp.xml

worried3 wrote: »

on the other hand you can close your account if you are getting uneasy about the halifax .
on this basis i have applied for an account if i become unhappy at the way things are going i will simply close the account & take an interest hit.

Yes, that is my view as well.

But..... don't forget Northern Rock - things can happen very quickly and when they do, online services crash and phones are not answered!

Special_Saver2 wrote: »

Does it take a long time for money to arrive in your offshore account after it is sent from a UK bank?

I used to have an Abbey offshore account many years ago. Transfers were by BACS or CHAPS and therefore took the same time as between UK accounts.