MSE News: Banks pledge to provide data that may help you find your perfect account 17 March 2014 at 6:41PM edited 17 March 2014 at 8:11PM in Budgeting & bank accounts 21 replies 2.2K views

Former_MSE_Helen

"Major banks have pledged to provide current account data in a standard format. The government hopes it will encourage new comparison sites that could help consumers check if they're getting the best deal."

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Banks pledge to provide data that may help you find your perfect account



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innovate

Following in the footsteps of the 7-day switching guarantee, this sounds like yet another attempt to convince people that they should only ever want one current account. If so, it would be disappointing to see MSE support the initiative but it would obviously be good if all the key features of each current account could be found in a single table on a website. Why do we need George Osborne for this?

Herbalus

I don't understand. I could draw up a table of all the current accounts and list their fees, interest and benefits in columns. What exactly is the big government innovation here??

Archi_Bald

It usefully serves to divert attention from really pressing problems, such as people having unfettered free access to their credit files, or making banks to clearly display the applicable interest rates against all accounts, incl the ones with 0% interest.

Eco_Miser

And what's this about sharing customer's data? I want my financial (and other) data kept private.

JimmyTheWig

Herbalus wrote: »

I don't understand. I could draw up a table of all the current accounts and list their fees, interest and benefits in columns. What exactly is the big government innovation here??

Yes, easy to list benefits and costs for each account.
But how do you know how those benefits and costs affect you personally? E.g. how many days in a year do you go overdrawn and by how much? What is your daily balance to apply in-credit interest to? How many months through the year do you qualify for a benefit? Etc...

miller

I received a "duplicate" (never received the original) closure statement for a Nationwide ISA the other day. That could have done with being in a normal format, let alone a standard format. Each entry was multiplied to about 4 lines with varying different abbreviations provided on 3 sheets of A4.

Archi_Bald

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Yes, easy to list benefits and costs for each account.
But how do you know how those benefits and costs affect you personally? E.g. how many days in a year do you go overdrawn and by how much? What is your daily balance to apply in-credit interest to? How many months through the year do you qualify for a benefit? Etc...

errm, you use your brains to figure out what applies to you?

Archi_Bald

miller wrote: »

I received a "duplicate" (never received the original) closure statement for a Nationwide ISA the other day. That could have done with being in a normal format, let alone a standard format. Each entry was multiplied to about 4 lines with varying different abbreviations provided on 3 sheets of A4.

is this in the wrong thread?

JimmyTheWig

Archi_Bald wrote: »

errm, you use your brains to figure out what applies to you?

So you think it would be relatively easy to work out how much interest you would earn over the course of a year with, say, the Santander 123 account?

JKSandy

George Osborne and co should be looking to teach children at School about personal financial management.