The One Account - does RBS nationalisation= us losing our savings??

princessdaisy2k

I don't know if it is exactly same thing but I have a northern rock mortgage and a lot of money invested in part towards off settng lowering the mortgage.

When the Northern Rock was nationalised, I was still and am still able to access that part if I want to have it back.

The only difference to my mortgage is that the Northern Rock refused to offer me a new package deal when mine run out as they have been trying to encourage customers to go elsewhere. As I had so much tied up, it was not practical to move elsewhere.

Hope this is some help.

tyllwyd

My feeling is that the potential problem with the One account (or at least as it used to be), is that there is no formal distinction between your 'mortgage' money and your 'savings' money - you just had a total owed, and a total that you were allowed to borrow if you wanted. It would make it much more difficult to separate out your savings if they wanted to get awkward about it. If it was a mortgage with different elements for savings & for the mortgage I'd be more confident about it.

linzy_p

tyllwyd wrote: »

My feeling is that the potential problem with the One account (or at least as it used to be), is that there is no formal distinction between your 'mortgage' money and your 'savings' money - you just had a total owed, and a total that you were allowed to borrow if you wanted. It would make it much more difficult to separate out your savings if they wanted to get awkward about it. If it was a mortgage with different elements for savings & for the mortgage I'd be more confident about it.

You're absolutely right - I bit the bullet and called them today. The girl was very helpful - and honest - saying "I don't mean this to sound harsh, but despite the fact you're fully enititled to withdraw the full facility, The One Account do not view it as your savings, rather as a large overpayment towards the debt. She wouldn't be drawn in on the issue of whether the government would just take the debt minus our "savings" (though she said there was nothing in the t&c's to say our savings are "safe") but did say we are free to withdraw it fully at this stage if we feel happier with that.

So, now it's just a case of where, and also I was pleased at how little it would affect our monthly payment - we would still be over-paying considerably.

Suddenly, there doesn't seem much point in having this account if we're scared to keep our savings there to off-set, but with the costs of re-mortgaging, we'll just have to stick around for a while til the field levels out a bit I guess.

Thanks for the advice/thoughts - a weekend of pondering should give us the chance to come up with a plan B for our savings!

tyllwyd

Just think, there must be a certain amount of money out on loan by RBS through One accounts. What would happen if everyone who has overpaid decided to withdraw the amount of their overpayments - they could end up with a large amount extra out on loan. You really wouldn't be surprised if they said No, we don't want any extra lending on our books, we're going to reduce everyone's facilities to zero as of today. Stranger things have happened in the last few months!

linzy_p

Don't - you're scaring me....maybe I should call them back NOW!!!!

:rotfl: :rotfl:

PasturesNew

linzy_p wrote: »

Methinks it's time to call The One Account

They won't know.
It's not happened. Until/if anything happened nobody would know, there'd just be a small handful of possible outcomes possible.

The money would still be "yours" though. You wouldn't lose the savings. There is a small chance they might consider paying down your mortgage by using your savings; it probably wouldn't happen though.

When a bank is nationalised, the shares become worthless, so it's the shareholders, people owning the shares, that would lose the value of those shares.

Look at Northern Rock as an example.

If I were you I'd put the kettle on, get a biscuit and enjoy Friday night. That'd be a much better use of your time.

tyllwyd

PasturesNew wrote: »

The money would still be "yours" though. You wouldn't lose the savings. There is a small chance they might consider paying down your mortgage by using your savings; it probably wouldn't happen though.

Yes, but you aren't understanding the way the One account works - the OP phoned up, and they confirmed that they don't have money earmarked as 'savings', it is just overpayments towards your debt. So you have already paid down your mortgage by using your savings, the question is whether they will allow you to increase your mortgage again by withdrawing them. The One account is based on the idea that they will let you do that, it just depends on you trusting them that they will continue to do so.

linzy_p

In fairness, when I called up this afternoon, the lady did say that when the government steps in "it's normally keen to let the banks retain control of how they operate their mortgages" but she still admitted she couldn't confirm whether our "savings" would be swallowed up to reduce the debt, so the only option is to pull them out of there I guess... wonder if everyone else is doing the same??

spence

My advice is to chill out, them saying you've overpayed and can't have your money is the same as your salary going in on the 1st of the month and then being told you can't spend it because it's an "overpayment", its just not going to happen.

dfitps

Shouldn't customers be glad it's dealt with this way (although I can see it could be inconvenient)? If the mortgage and savings parts were considered separately and a bank went bust (not nationalised) and couldn't pay savers, you'd only get savings back up to the FCSC (or whatever it's called) limit. Imagine if you had a 100K mortgage and 80K of 'savings' in there - net balance -20K. Suppose the 80K was kept separate and the bank went bust - 50K protected, 30K lost. But the mortgage would still be at 100K. End result -50K instead of the -20K it ought to be. So it's safer this way round I think - I'd rather risk losing a right to borrow than risk losing actual money!