Charter Savings Bank

dwsO1

Does anyone have any experience investing in Charter Savings Bank. It's not one I'm familiar with

jimjames

I've not heard of them. Are you looking to buy their shares? Or do you mean you want to save in one of their accounts?

masonic

They are offering some of the best fixed rate savings accounts at the moment. They are relatively new (2008), but have FSCS protection, so I wouldn't be put off by their obscurity.

ratechaser

Interesting, I saw some articles about them a month ago but they seem to have upped their rates since then... 2% for a 1 year bond is about as good as I've seen recently

HUMBUG

Weird reducing the 1 yr rate from 2% to 1.75% while keeping the 120 day notice going at 1.95%. Pain in the derriere trying to make the initial deposits as they only accept it from a nominated account. So if you have money spread around different bank accounts it gets complicated having to move monies to a single nominated account and then transfer into the Charter Savings Bank account (although you have 14 days to do all of this). If you try and make 'faster payments' from accounts other than nominated one , they reject it back to the originating bank. Apart from the latter , it seems quite straightforward to open an account although found it difficult to get through to their customer services helpdesks (probably overloaded with calls which is why they suddenly reduced the rate).

Arthurian

The 120 day notice account has disappeared from their website now.

The 95 day notice account is still there at 1.8% AER, though. It does seem odd, given that the one year bond is 1.75% AER.

ManAtHome

HUMBUG wrote: »

Pain in the derriere trying to make the initial deposits as they only accept it from a nominated account.

Paragon are similar - all deposits accepted only from your nominated account.

I don't have anything with Charter, but have accounts with other smaller (aka "challenger") banks - Aldermore, Shawbrook, and Paragon - all been pretty good so far, so wouldn't have any qualms about giving them a try.

Ballard

I'd never heard of them so looked them upon The Bankers Almanac Website:




Established February 18, 2010. Prudential Regulation Authority approved banking licence on January 6, 2015, trading as Charter Savings Bank

alanq

It's only been taking deposits for a month.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/mar/03/charter-savings-accounts-online-bank

colsten

You need to make sure they are covered by FSCS, which any of the UK authorised banks are. But don't just rely on their website, do check they are really on the FCA register.

Even then, you need to be careful, as FSCS protection does not come into force until a firm goes into administration. This can take a very long time, and perhaps too long if you need your money with some urgency. It might even drag on forever if the company is smart enough to keep themselves out of insolvency.

You can't just go to the FSCS and request they pay you, and the FOS won't display any sense of urgency either to help you. This is a lesson learnt the hard way by the many people who have ISA deposits with a credit union that for the last 5 months has been unable to return any money to any of their depositors (ref this thread)

I would urge you to assess your risk in detail before you put your money into any of the small companies.

My comments are general - I have not assessed Charter Savings Bank and have no particular view on whether I would deposit any of my money with them or not. They currently have nothing on offer that attracts me, therefore I am not going to assess their viability for myself at this stage.

flobbalobbalob

I opened the 120 day notice issue 1

It was only available for 3 weeks before changing to issue 2 with a different interest rate.

Issue 2 was only available for 2 weeks before it was withdrawn.

If you look at the bottom of their web page "historic products" you will find that in it's short trading life it has withdrawn 5 notice accounts. The oldest is 3 weeks.

a bit worrying