Student bank accounts for 16 year old

wellingtonb

My daughter is in full-time training to be a dancer and in September will be starting a degree, for which she will receive student loan funding. I am trying to find a student bank account which will suit a 16 year old, but they all seem to have 17 or 18 as a minimum.

Is there an account I haven't found yet? If not, what would be a good alternative?

Pleut

Perhaps you could speak to the university that's allowing her to do a degree so young and see what they suggest?

westy22

wellingtonb wrote: »

My daughter is in full-time training to be a dancer and in September will be starting a degree, for which she will receive student loan funding. I am trying to find a student bank account which will suit a 16 year old, but they all seem to have 17 or 18 as a minimum.

Is there an account I haven't found yet? If not, what would be a good alternative?

Have you tried the Santander 123 Mini account? - that should suit well and pays good interest (3%) on £2,000

Maggie.Moo_2

Other than becoming ticking the box of becoming a student and therefore upgrading to a student account, why does she want one? The only real benefit to having a student account is the interest free overdraft (and occasional freebie) which is why most accounts will want the account holder to be at least 18 years old. The loan will be paid into any account in her name (they can't tell if it's a student account or not) so she could use her current account if she already has one or she should open a current account while she's waiting to become eligible for a student account.

She'll probably want to do a search for the best interest rate and, as westy22 mentioned, the Santander 1|2|3 Mini pays 3% on balances of £300 to £2,000 but she needs to keep her balance between those figures to receive it (I wasted two years of interest because I didn't realise I wasn't eligible once my balance was too high for approximately 97% of the academic year).

If it's not the overdraft, it may be worth visiting a couple of branches and seeing if they'll allow her to open a student account on the provision that she can't have an overdraft until she's 18 (or 17 if they usually offer the accounts to 17 year olds).

Good luck to your daughter on her degree.

Jazzy_B

The reason why most institutions won't allow student accounts for younger students is that they can't have credit or an overdraft before the age of 18. Both my kids went to uni at 17, and they had similar problems. My youngest went for the Santander mini 123 with the option of a debit card, with no problems. She then transferred to Santander student account with same account number, to take advantage of free rail card offer.

silvercar

Metro bank will open an account for 16 year olds.

Ed-P

Yea the overdraft is really the only benefit to a student account over an ordinary current account, and at 16 you'd not be eligible for one anyway.

She presumably already has a bank account, so the loan can be paid into that.