Natwest esaver coming to an end

lolly5648

My esaver finishes at the end of September. Has anyone heard any rumours about what Natwest will replace it with. The rate without the bonus is only 1%.

I like the fact that you can pay bills direct from it and don't have to transfer the money to the current a/c.

ScarletBea

I'm in the same situation...
I was thinking of going to the latest Santander, but the fact that the FP limit is £300 a day isn't good.

iltisman

They probably wont renew it after so many people on here griped about the rules of the account .

alanq

Are you sure it's coming to an end then? I seem to remember a lot of confusion about account opening dates, bonuses not starting to be earned until the 15th of the following month etc. and thus some haziness about when the bonuses ended if the quoted AER was to be achieved.

However, given that better interest rates than NatWest's (even with a bonus!) are available elsewhere and all similar accounts will have Faster Payments* by the beginning of next year, I don't see the point of leaving more than a trivial amount in this account after this month. I couldn't face having to argue with NatWest about the small print.

* I don't know what it is correctly called. The rules says that the funds must arrive by the end of the following banking day. Some Faster Payments arrive in an instant or a within couple of hours. So not as fast as fastest Faster Payments!

lolly5648

iltisman wrote: »

They probably wont renew it after so many people on here griped about the rules of the account .

I didn't have enough in there to worry about the few pounds I lost with the interest rate problem - I just like to have a few thousand in an instant access a/c earning a reasonable rate with fastpay. The rest of my money is in fixed rate bonds etc.

atypical

lolly5648 wrote: »

Has anyone heard any rumours about what Natwest will replace it with.

They ran a similar bonus offer before this one. Once this came to an end they offered selective individuals (I think no one could work out the criteria they were using) an account which was reasonably competitive.

There's a thread on here somewhere discussing it but I can't find it.

alanq

atypical wrote: »

There's a thread on here somewhere discussing it but I can't find it.

This one?
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2078319

atypical

alanq wrote: »

This one?
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2078319

Yeah that's one of them, thanks. I'm sure there was a longer one too.

I forgot that the offer involved them replacing the bonus with a lower rate before the 12 months were up. A very NatWest thing to do!

psychic_teabag

lolly5648 wrote: »

I didn't have enough in there to worry about the few pounds I lost with the interest rate problem - I just like to have a few thousand in an instant access a/c earning a reasonable rate with fastpay. The rest of my money is in fixed rate bonds etc.

tesco is currently offering 2.9% to new customers. Same withdrawal arrangements as natwest - up to £10k daily by faster payment. The online interface used to be very similar to the natwest one, but I think they've changed it a bit now.

For 3-5k, a lloyds vantage current account is another option, offering 3% (requires a bit of messing about monthly). Gives faster payments plus other current account benefits.