Bank Account Incentives

ulysses76

Tried posting this at the end of another thread but got no joy so try again.
re the A&L Premier direct current account, can anyone tell me if the following is feasible?
I have £12000 which I can stash away, but rather than tie it up for a year or two, I wondered if I could do the following?
1: I open up an A&L Premier direct account with £2500 & then refer my wife as a friend (£25 each), who opens up an account with £2500.
2:Both open up the Abbey account with £2500 that gives 6% interest.
3: Both open up an HBOS account that pays £5/month for depositing £1000/month.
I would then set up DD's to transfer £ 1000 between my 3 accounts & the same for my wife.
By my calculations, that gives 4 x £150 for the Abbey + A&L accounts, £60 each for the HBOS accounts plus the £25 each rom A&L for refer a friend, giving a total of £770 made from £12,000 for a year as opposed to £480 if you got a fixed rate of 4%.
Do these figures add up & is it legal?

anselld

1: Yes but referrals seem unreliable. Try cashback sites also.
2: No, I don't think the T&Cs let you have this as well as A&L as they are both Santander.
3: Yes, but dont leave the money in there, take it straight back out.

Put any money that can't earn 6% in LTSB at 4% and cycle £1000 through - you can have 3 of these each.

Be aware that these are all current accounts so will incurr a credit search, unlike savings accounts.

ulysses76

anselld wrote: »

1: Yes but referrals seem unreliable. Try cashback sites also.
2: No, I don't think the T&Cs let you have this as well as A&L as they are both Santander.
3: Yes, but dont leave the money in there, take it straight back out.

Put any money that can't earn 6% in LTSB at 4% and cycle £1000 through - you can have 3 of these each.

Be aware that these are all current accounts so will incurr a credit search, unlike savings accounts.

Cheers Anselld,
2:I had a look through both Abbey & A+L's T&Cs and can see nowhere where it says that you can't have accounts in both banks.
3: Yes, it was my intention to just keep £10 or so in the HBOS accounts.
If I can't have both Abbey & A+L accounts, then it would make sense to open a LTSB Vantage account.
Is there a problem with incurring more credit searches?

anselld

2: Actually, now that you mention it I can't find that term in either A&L or Abbey so perhaps I'm out of date, was just going from memory.

TopCashback are still offering £45 cashback on the A&L account by the way.

Searches are not a big deal. But if you are needing to apply for credit any time soon they can possibly affect your scoring.

Aegis

Bear in mind that this method will be frowned upon by banks, and could be considered grounds to close your accounts down if they decide that your business isn't profitable to them. I don't think it's a widespread problem (or likely to become one for that matter) with any of the providers named so far, but I know that HSBC weren't fans of this cycling of cash to make the account look busy.

As long as you're happy with this fairly small risk, it sounds like you should do ok.