Best Student Bank Account

recovering_spendaholic

My Daughter is going to University soon to do a nursing degree and needs to open a student bank account. She is currently with Halifax, and her Saturday/part-time wages from her job in Boots is paid into that. Three times now she has gone overdrawn by about 20p and they have charged her £35 on each occasion, with the result that she is now about £100 overdrawn. She didn't tell me this until yesterday and I went into the branch with the charges letters and they agreed to remove one of the three charges as a goodwill gesture, but I am not happy and have told her that I will pay for her to close the account. I wondered if anyone knew which the best student accounts were at the moment?

book12

Halifax, HSBC, Natwest/RBS.

7sefton

Having a student account doesn't mean banks are any less keen to whack on overdraft charges I'm afraid. Here's my advice though:

I understand you are a bit angry towards Halifax at the moment, but they actually do have the best student account in terms of overdraft... up to £3000 interest free! If you trust your daughter, it might be worth asking Halifax for a higher overdraft than what she actually needs, acting as a buffer zone. For example, if your daughter usually has a £500 overdraft, asking Halifax for £750 but stress to your daughter she must try never to go past £500. This way, she can avoid any charges like the recent ones.

However, if you want rid of Halifax here are the best of the rest:

NatWest is very popular with students, and if you apply at the right time (i.e. summer) you also get a free railcard.

Smile.co.uk is completely online. Their overdraft charges are as high as Halifax, but they were very understanding when I incurred one and waived it.