Inconspicuously shifting £10K from BoS to Santander

Kernel_Sanders

My mother has 3 x £5000 in BoS Vantage accounts but will have less than £10,000 in her Santander 123 a/c on 1 Feb when the next tranche of regular saver money will have migrated. She'd rather have as few accounts as possible but will probably need all the Vantage accounts on 6 April when a £16,000 ISA matures. As a compromise, I've suggested emptying two of the accounts this month, so that they remain open with a nil balance but I'm keen not to trigger a request from BoS to come to a branch (or the Halifax) to show identification. What would be the best way to achieve this? I'd rather not have an overnight balance of less than £3000 in either account if possible.
I realize these FPs have to be done before about 8.15pm Mon-Fri otherwise a day's interest is lost.

YorkshireBoy

For the sake of 2 months I'd leave things as they are. Presumably she's cross-funding the BoS accounts now by internal SO? If not, she should do to minimise the account maintenance required.

If she's adamant she wants to move some to Santander, I can say that my 3 BoS accounts have all been run down to £1 at some point or other over the last 2 years or so (and several times all at the same time)...with no adverse effect.

colsten

What would she gain from shifting from a 3% account to a 3% account?

YorkshireBoy

colsten wrote: »

What would she gain from shifting from a 3% account to a 3% account?

It seems like she doesn't want the hassle of 2 more accounts to manage (albeit only for two months!).

But on that point, I should add (to my earlier post) that even though I'd run my BoS accounts right down to £1, I still cycled £1K per month through them...just in case they decided to remove Vantage!

jennifernil

I cannot really see the problem here.
Why would she be asked to go to a branch with ID?

And why bother moving the money anyway for such a short time?
Much simpler to set up SOs to mave the funding between the 3 accounts if she finds doing that herself onerous.

If you do decide to move out £10k-ish, I would leave £1 in the accounts rather than zero.

My OH also has 2 BOS Vantage accounts sitting with only £1 in them, they don't seem bothered.

Goldiegirl

I think the OP is overthinking this.

'Inconspicuously' sounds like there's something dodgy going on, and I don't really know why you think that BOS would want your mother to go in and show ID?

The easiest way for her to achieve what she wants is to just do the transfers and keep the 'spare' accounts open with a small balance.

Kernel_Sanders

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

It seems like she doesn't want the hassle of 2 more accounts to manage (albeit only for two months!)

jennifernil wrote: »

Why would she be asked to go to a branch with ID?

And why bother moving the money anyway for such a short time?

I was asked to. I set up a new payment to an external a/c but they wouldn't pay it until I rang them up. This I did but their systems were down, so I agreed (foolishly) to answer questions about my credit rating. She then asked me questions about transactions on a credit card I hadn't used for over a year, and blocked all internet access when I couldn't answer them.

Doing this avoids the 'unnatural' funding of the BoS accounts for 3 months, not 2. I dislike doing this because one day they may load a program identifying all accounts which are cross-funding, with a view to closing those deemed to be 'playing the system'.

Archi_Bald

Goldiegirl wrote: »

I think the OP is overthinking this.

Yep, definitely.

YorkshireBoy

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

Doing this avoids the 'unnatural' funding of the BoS accounts for 3 months, not 2.

So long as they're happy with "unnatural funding" for the other 9 months of the year, that's the main thing.

xylophone

"unnatural funding"

First time I've ever seen it called that......

Kernel_Sanders

xylophone wrote: »

First time I've ever seen it called that......

Hmm...maybe I shouldn't be implying that contributors on this Board indulge in unnatural practices

I've consulted a thesaurus and come up with
spurious
adjective: not being what it purports to be; false or fake.
"separating authentic and spurious claims"
synonyms:bogus, fake, not genuine, specious, false, factitious, counterfeit, fraudulent, trumped-up, sham, mock, feigned, pretended, contrived, fabricated, manufactured, fictitious, make-believe, invalid, fallacious, meretricious.