RBS Guaranteed Bonds

gavinl1967

Morning folks,

I'm looking for some advice. I had £25000 sitting getting a rubbish interest rate in a savings account, so I opened a Citibank savers account to move the money into. However, when I went into my local RBS to transfer the cash I was persuaded to talk to their financial advisor, who recommended putting some of my cash into one of their 4 year guaranteed bonds, with up to a 30% return on my investment - I could however end up gaining nothing with the RBS account if the stock market doesn't perform!

Now, I'm a bit of a financial neanderthal :wall:, so am looking for some advice. Do I put all my cash into the Citibank account with a good interest rate for a year, then move it to another account when the bonus period is over, or do I go for the RBS thing?

Any help advice would be appreciated. Cheers:beer:

oldfella

rule 1 - do not buy investment products from banks

rule 2 is similar

amcluesent

Still not covered by FCSC as it's not a savings account, and who knows what 5.3% return will look like in 6 years. If you sell out sooner, then you'll only get market value for the bond.

On the flip-side, since RBS is 80% owned by the government, you could say the chance of the default on tier 1 bonds is small. That doesn't mean a desperate govt. won't try and steal your capital - 3.5% War Loan anyone?

dunstonh

rule 3 - follow oldfella's advice as its right.

Bank investment products are typically poor and expensive.

Any help advice would be appreciated.

Do you want to invest or do you want to save?

Investment means taking on some level of risk and long term. Save means no risk but being prepared to replace investment risk with inflation risk or shortfall risk.

mark13

have you used you ISA allowance ?