MSE News: Euro crisis - How safe is Santander?

SantEmp

innovate wrote: »

SantEmp, I have thanked you for your last two posts because most in them makes a lot of sense to me. I also find Santander generally no worse than any of the other high street banks --- each has their own problems!

However, I wonder whether you can comment on the two bits quoted above: It is my own experience, and that of some mates, that Santander repeatedly slap a hard stop on any online payments above about £1K. Getting that stop removed invariably involves massive inconvenience, and sometimes people find their payments have actually been cancelled, without anyone telling them. Leading to often massive inconvenience / being in arrears etc etc etc.

If Santander have their "own little pot", and if your daily FP limit is £200K (when did this go up from £100K, btw?), then what's the point in making people's life hell when they actually want to transfer, online, the odd £20K- £50K to another account (their own or someone else's)?

I can only speak for what we practice in branch but we're capable of doing a transfer of up to £200k (and maybe more, not reached that total yet!) anywhere in the country. Due to somewhat.....'limited' personal funds i've never tried it myself online but i've also never experienced a customer saying he's been unable to transfer anything. As I say, each manager is judged on funds held in each branch, so maybe any problems are caused by them?

Could it be a fraud issue? We often find they take the 'better safe than sorry' approach online, especially with the amount of money in question.

innovate

Ah, ok, seems to be the usual Branch - Online divide again.

Doc_N

innovate wrote: »

Ah, ok, seems to be the usual Branch - Online divide again.

Seems to be.

It's all well and good talking about £200K Faster Payment limits in-branch, but most customers needing to use Faster Payments are trying to use them online. And online with Santander it's still a hopeless system, with low, unpublicised, limits which frequently catch people out.

The only other bank I know of which is as bad is Citibank, and I won't now use either of them because they just can't be relied on to make a simple payment quickly.

sabretoothtigger

This is a regular thing for them. Its a form of fund raising and stabilising their asset value.
The market gets to share in the future profits and Santander gets to realise their previous profits on work done in Mexico. Where as RBS or whoever would double their bets each time borrow instead of cashing in and sharing risk like this

August 16, 6:44pm
Santander to outline plan for Mexican IPO
Banco Santander will detail plans to list its Mexican unit in the coming days, in what is set to be the largest initial public offering on record for Latin America's second-largest economy.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a46170ac-e7c1-11e1-95e1-00144feab49a.html

And while 2009 the bank managed to spin off part of its Brazilian arm, its plans for a listing of its UK subsidiary have been blown off course by turbulent markets, with Alfredo S!enz, chief executive, saying in July the process could be restarted next year, or in 2014.