A question about the Halifax Regular Saver

Legacy_user

I have recently applied for the new A&L Premier Direct Bank Account and Regular Saver and i am hoping to fund the Regular Saver from the £500 i have to pay in once a month. I also am hoping to keep the Halifax Regular Savings Account i have going too. I am wondering if its possible to change the bank account that funds my Halifax Regular Savings Account? At present, the money is going out of my main account, but if i could pay it out of the A&L account, i wouldnt have to transfer the £250 back into my other account to fund the Halifax. My Halifax Regular saver matured today and i plan to keep it in the A&L Premier Direct Account as it is pays a little more interest than the Halifax Websaver where it is sitting at the moment i think.

grumbler

Usually it is very easy to do:

1. Cancell your current Standing Order. Do this right after the payment or at least 5 days before the payment date. Usually you can do this online.
2. Set up a new SO with A&L. Again this can be done online. All you need is your Halifax RS sort code and account number - both available from your paperwork or online. Standing Order must be set up a few days before payment date - be carefull not to miss monthly payment.

P.S. In fact Halifax don't know whether a payment is made by SO or not. You can make all payments manually online or, if needed, one manual payment when moving SO.

mary

I rang on Monday to open the A&L Premier Direct Account and also to set up the Regular Saver 10% with A&L. I ran it past the guy on the phone. How about paying in £500 into the Premier Direct each around the 25th, say, then drip feed £250 of that into their 10% Regular Saver on the 1st of the following month. So that fulfils both of the requirements. The other £250 will feed the Halifax Regular 7% Saver I also have. I have a Standing Order which I set up online with my current account at Lloyds, so I can delete it immediately, if I want to and can, when I get the paperwork set up a new standing order from the A&L instead. As far as the A& L are concerned, everything is fine from their perspective.

As far as Halifax is concerned, I can't see that it would be a problem. On their website it says

"Halifax Regular Saver

Although you cannot make withdrawals from your Halifax Regular Saver, if you do need access to your money you can close your account at any time. If you close we will pay interest up to the date of closure at the rate for the Halifax Web Saver (no card) account.

If you fail to make a payment of at least £25 by standing order to reach the Regular Saver account on or before the 28th of each month, we will close your account, pay interest up to the date of closure at the current rate for Halifax Web Saver (no card) account and transfer the account balance to your linked easy access savings account.

Minimum age: 16. Sole accounts only. Only one account per person. Regular monthly payments of at least £25 by standing order. (No standing orders from other Halifax savings accounts.)"

So long as they are getting their money, regularly, fine. Hope it helps

Dagobert

grumbler wrote:

In fact Halifax don't know whether a payment is made by SO or not. You can make all payments manually online or, if needed, one manual payment when moving SO.

A while back I had started a thread What is s Standing Order? because I was wondering whether the receiving bank can distinguish at all between a SO and a manual payment. My understanding is that both forms of payments are BACS payments and as far as I understand an SO is just a repeat instruction to the bank to carry out the same BACS payment at set intervals and therefore it should not make a difference.

I would prefer to pay my various regular savers manually rather than by SO because I pay them from different sources during the course of the year. But as virtually all regular savers' T&Cs quite specifically state that only SO is acceptable I am concerned to lose the regular saver bonus/interest rate.

For instance, I took Abbey's regular saver out last winter and they make a big spiel in their T&Cs that it will revert to the Monthly Saver's interest rate if not paid by SO.