Charter savings

Their bank brand is relatively new but the parent company picked up a very high ranking in the latest Times 'best 100 companies to work for (http://appointments.thesundaytimes.co.uk/article/best100companies/). So regardless of customer service awards and best buy accolades, that kind of thing can give you some comfort that as a new challenger bank they are trying to build up a good reputation of one sort or another, and so are unlikely to go and immediately start screwing people over (staff or customers).

If you're considering the 1 year bond which is currently at the top of the interest rate tables on MSE, then it's online and you put your money in at the beginning and take it out at the end and don't need any service in between. So would seem fine to go with a relatively unknown but UK based bank. If you are looking at the notice accounts which are also good payers, then if the rates change for the worse you can easily go back to Virgin or off to others.

So, no obvious red flags (although as you can imagine, a bank brand which hasn't been going for more than a couple of years is not necessarily going to have built up a well established pattern of good or bad service). They have FSCS protection which is the key thing.

I opened a 2 year fixed rate bond on Thursday.

Everything very easy and quick.

Only problem was when setting up a payment from my bank for my initial deposit.Charter say to put in your account# then. Slash followed by your username in the reference box,however most banks do not let you use a character other than letters and numbers eg 87544569-Smith but that brings up an error message with some banks.