Stoozing upgraded bank accounts!

maver1nk

Hi all,

I am going to Australia with my wife in August and currently she has a recently-upgraded Select bank account with Natwest (one which helps build a credit score). As we're going so far we need to buy travel insurance, so we started looking at the various options.

The Advantage Gold Account with Natwest offers travel insurance for free, which, on the face of it, looks like it could be worth anything between £100 and £150, which is good. However, you have to pay £12.95 a month for the account.

I was "chatting" with a Natwest advisor earlier today and found out that there is no minimum term for the upgrade, and was basically told that it would be possible for us to be covered for our trip if we sign up about 7-10 days before we go, and then cancel the upgrade when get back, thereby only paying £12.95 for one month's worth of account upgrade.

Can anyone tell me if this would be problematic in terms of us trying to get a mortgage in 3 to 4 years and whether this wouuld look bad in terms of a credit rating? I can't se any other negatives in terms of doing this as it would save us well over £100 for the equivalent travel insurance if we bought it individually and did not upgrade the bank account. At the moment, the other benefits are not really worth having for the long term, we think...

Any comments much appreciated!

Gavin

InsideInsurance

Changing your type of current account with Natwest will not make the slightest difference at all. I've had what used to be Private, Gold and their Select accounts and what was given to the CRAs never changed.

As to the insurance question, yes, you could do what you are suggesting but then you would have no cover if anything was to happen between now and when you upgrade your account that prevented you traveling. To get maximum protection from travel insurance you really should buy it at the same time as when you buy the holiday.

From memory the natwest policy isnt too bad but it doesnt cover if any of the companies goes bust which may be a consideration in this day and age

maver1nk

Thanks, that's really helped me a lot. I think you're right about getting the insurance sooner rather than later. I haven't heard anything bad about FlightCentre but anything can happen and often/usually does.

maver1nk

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Changing your type of current account with Natwest will not make the slightest difference at all. I've had what used to be Private, Gold and their Select accounts and what was given to the CRAs never changed.

As to the insurance question, yes, you could do what you are suggesting but then you would have no cover if anything was to happen between now and when you upgrade your account that prevented you traveling. To get maximum protection from travel insurance you really should buy it at the same time as when you buy the holiday.

From memory the natwest policy isnt too bad but it doesnt cover if any of the companies goes bust which may be a consideration in this day and age

I found out that the agency is ATOL-protected, which means we would be covered if it went bust.