Am I an idiot?

ranciduk

I have banked with Halifax all my life and I have three accounts with then which in total comes to around £95k

Which obviously is £10k over the fsa safeguard of £85k

Am i crazy to risk this?

I would lose a lot of money if Lloyds group went belly up

But it's not likely is it

The thing is if I want to move any of my money to another bank I have NO photo I.d. - so I'm sure they wouldn't let me, due to money laundering rules etc

Am I being stupid or do most people think it should be ok?

It worries me as this is my life savings and the thought of losing thousands of pounds is scary!

Any thoughts apreciated

PasturesNew

It's not likely .... but now would be a good time to investigate a 2nd account .... with maybe more interest too.

If it went right now .... you'd get £85k back ... but it wouldn't be replaced tomorrow, there'd be a little wait (few weeks?) as the nation and banking rocked about ....

colsten

£10K seems a stupid risk to take to save on the cost for a passport.

Halifax are almost certainly not paying you the best interest rates. You could most likely earn the money for a passport, and a lot more, within 6 months, if you could start playing the current account game.

CLAPTON

ranciduk wrote: »

I have banked with Halifax all my life and I have three accounts with then which in total comes to around £95k

Which obviously is £10k over the fsa safeguard of £85k

Am i crazy to risk this?

I would lose a lot of money if Lloyds group went belly up

But it's not likely is it

The thing is if I want to move any of my money to another bank I have NO photo I.d. - so I'm sure they wouldn't let me, due to money laundering rules etc

Am I being stupid or do most people think it should be ok?

It worries me as this is my life savings and the thought of losing thousands of pounds is scary!

Any thoughts apreciated

one can open most a/cs online without any id except for an existing bank a/c

e.g I opened Santander 123 a/c a few months ago entirely online with no id

ChesterDog

I have opened accounts in the recent past for both parents, latterly with not much in the way of ID. My wife, also, who has only a Blue Badge.

It can be a problem even when you think it is not, because they can ask for something spontaneously after the account has been opened. We always seem to have got around it though. Letter from nursing home matron, for example. Most banks are more flexible on this than you might think.

masonic

I'm pretty sure the last time I was asked for photo ID when opening an account was, coincidentally, Halifax back in 2008. Since then I've opened accounts with 12 other banks/building societies (2 of them also part of Lloyds banking group), all of whom were satisfied with electronic ID checks or in rare cases a recent utility/council tax bill.

jimjames

I don't know about idiot but its not very mse to use accounts not paying the best rates. You can get 3% to 5% elsewhere which I bet is more than Halifax.

Bogof_Babe

jimjames wrote: »

I don't know about idiot but its not very mse to use accounts not paying the best rates. You can get 3% to 5% elsewhere which I bet is more than Halifax.

Where? Genuine question, I'm always looking.

Archi_Bald

Bogof_Babe wrote: »

Where? Genuine question, I'm always looking.

Various current accounts at TSB, LLoyds, Nationwide, BOS, Tesco, Santander, plus some Regular Savings Accounts. Total up to around £50,000, more if you can do joint accounts.

xylophone

Where? Genuine question, I'm always looking.

How can a regular poster not have seen the posts on 2 TSB Classic Plus in own name, two in partner's, two joint, 1 Nationwide Flex account each and one joint, two BOS Classic Vantage each and two joint.........etc

jimjames

Bogof_Babe wrote: »

Where? Genuine question, I'm always looking.

Looks like there are still some people that haven't heard!

No wonder it annoys me that MSE don't promote the best paying accounts .

Look at the top of the screen ^^^^ - no mention of 5% at all in the top rates section.

TSB & Nationwide both offer 5% and you can get this on a total of £6500 yourself, more with partner.

masonic wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the last time I was asked for photo ID when opening an account was, coincidentally, Halifax back in 2008. Since then I've opened accounts with 12 other banks/building societies (2 of them also part of Lloyds banking group), all of whom were satisfied with electronic ID checks or in rare cases a recent utility/council tax bill.

Opened all the current accounts mentioned.

Not one has asked for ID