Regular Saver - after 12 months

Archi_Bald

book12 wrote: »

I think Halifax's regular saver feature is good and hopefully other banks will adopt the method

Sorry to disagree with you as I think it's one of the worst regular savings accounts. There are half a dozen other accounts that pay twice or even three times the Halifax interest, and many that allow up to double the monthly deposit amount. There are also some that don't have any restrictions on withdrawals. We can but hope that none of these others follow the Halifax example!

The best ones are listed at the start of this thread: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/6932895#Comment_6932895

I would never give up 50% or more of my interest potential just because I might have to spend 10 minutes once a year to open another regular saver and to move a bit of money about.

polymaff

Archi_Bald wrote: »

Sorry to disagree with you as I think it's one of the worst regular savings accounts. There are half a dozen other accounts that pay twice or even three times the Halifax interest, and many that allow up to double the monthly deposit amount. There are also some that don't have any restrictions on withdrawals. We can but hope that none of these others follow the Halifax example!

The best ones are listed at the start of this thread: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/6932895#Comment_6932895

I would never give up 50% or more of my interest potential just because I might have to spend 10 minutes once a year to open another regular saver and to move a bit of money about.

AIUI what Book12 is approving of is the Halifax roll-over procedure - and I agree with him. Describing this procedure to other providers - particularly HSBC - as a better procedure from both the customers' and the bank's point of view (i.e. it is what most customers will want to do and it requires less admin by the bank, respectively) just produces the "That is a very good idea" verbal response together with the "why don't you b****r off" body language.

Archi_Bald

Well that roll-over procedure is just designed to catch the unaware and lazy savers, who probably wouldn't even realise if the interest rate changed at roll-over time. The automatic roll-over also locks you in - you must pay in at least £25 a month and no withdrawals are allowed unless you do what - - cancel the account? How? The T&Cs are a bit opaque on this.

I don't like such sort of lock-ins at all as I prefer to be in control.

But anyway, as long as I can save over £2,000 a month into regular savers that pay between 4% and 6%, the Halifax account doesn't warrant any further consideration by me.

colsten

I have had many Regular Savers for some 8 years now and never found it a problem to deal with the matured accounts. In that time, Halifax never had a market-leading Regular Saver, even though the others in LBG (Lloyds / Lloyds-TSB, BOS) did. Those Halifax terms strike me as a bit of a Marketing gimmick tbh.

It takes next to no time to take the appropriate actions at maturity of a 12 (or 18) months regular saver, and there have always been quite a few great options every time I needed to find a new one. The MSE RS thread Archi posted a link for has been going since the year dot and is simply brilliant as it takes you just a couple of minutes at most to identify the most current best deals.

I'd never consider a 2% RS as long as I can put over £50K into current accounts a 3%+ AER, and at the same time can have another £20K or so sloshing through 4% - 6% Regular Savers. It doesn't strike me as very MSE to settle for anything but the best buys.