Close Britannia account or keep?

sabretoothtigger

The minimum would be 100 I believe. Some of them let people top up otherwise ineligible accounts

I would guess windfalls are not likely now but who knows, the financial landscape is probably going to change alot in future years towards one direction or the other

Essex123

£100 would be the minimum if Britannia was still a building society, but its not.

Holding a stand alone savings account with Britannia now gives you zero ownership interest. Your deposit is legally with the Co-op Bank, and so should be viewed the same as if you deposited money with Barclays or NatWest.

Your ownership interest is now represented by your membership of Co-operative Group (as long as you accepted it). You will potentially get a Co-op dividend reward for having money invested in the Co-op Bank/Britannia, in the same way as if you bought goods in a Co-op food shop.

The three reasons I can think of keeping a Britannia savings account are:

(i) you genuine want to keep the account because it is "good"

(ii) you want to keep the account incase an "existing customer" product is offered at some time in the future

(iii) you had accounts with both Britannia and Co-op Bank pre-merger and want to keep double FSCS protection (see here http://www.britannia.co.uk/_site/channels/savings/guides/managing-finances/compensation-scheme.html)

For what its worth, I have closed all 3 of my Britannia accounts, but kept the co-op membership in case the co-op sells out at some future point in time.