Lloyds Gold Account or who else

SeniorSam

For some years I have been rather lax with our current account dealings with Lloyds TSB and was advised that I should move our classic joint account into a Gold account by the bank.

The account has always been in credit, between £2k - £4k and fed,when required, from other accounts on deposit.

The Gold account would need to pay in £1000 per month, which is met by my state pension, so not a problem, plus required to keep a minimum of £5000 in the account, which gives 3% interest, but the account costs £12.95 pm, so interest is negated.

All direct debits are paid by the classic account, approximately £1000 each year, so I will need to actually keep about £7k in the account.

Additional benefits are AA cover (this would need to be uplifted as it is very basic), plus benefit of travel insurance, which is a major benefit as we are both over 70 and this account would cover us until age 80, so should save us a fair bit with 2-3 holidays annually.

Question is, does it look that good, or is there another bank around offering better terms?

Sam

Tixy

There is a board on bank accounts that it might be better to post in = Budgeting & Bank Accounts

Personally I wouldn't want to keep that level of funds in a current account. I'd imagine you could get as good or better interest rate by keeping them in a savings account (obviously that depends on what other savings you have etc)

How much do you currently spend on travel insurance a year? - I can see in your case this could be worth having a premium account in this instance, but I'd also look at other premium accounts across the market to see if any of those have similar travel insurance in terms of ages covered, that don't require such a large balance to be held in the account.

SeniorSam

Thanks for the reply Tixy.

I have always kept a reasonable amount in our current account and although they want a little more for the gold account and interest is negated by the charges, the travel insurance alone would make it beneficial with long haul and European holidays that require high cover at our age and the cost of each holiday.

My question is, are there other banks that have better terms than on offer at Lloyds in the hope of cutting down time with more research.

This site is so good with replies in all areas so it was an obvious place to search.

Sam

Tixy

A lot of premium accounts have travel insurance included, but I expect many have lower age limits, (I'm with hsbc and theirs is 70), but the regulars on the banking section of the forum will probably know what incentives each bank has.

SeniorSam

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