Moving products after clearing debts

theburningcat

Over the last 3-4 years, I accumulated about £10k of debt to help fund a startup business and to ease student budget woes. My account choices were focused on paying essentially no interest on this and I secured long interest free deals from Santander and shifted funds around on other accounts.

I want to leave Santander because I don't need the interest free deals any more and the customer service is terrible. I signed up with First Direct and am happy with them. Right now I have:

1. Santander 123 postgrad account - this has been my main bank account since they were A&L (~15 years). Zero balance.
2. Santander 123 credit card - got for the interest free period and treated as a loan - I've had it for about 2 years. Zero balance.
3. Santander HTB ISA - just opened since First Direct don't offer a HTB ISA
4. First Direct 1st account - the current account I want to keep, got it about 6 months ago. Stupidly didn't use the switch service in time.
5. First Direct regular saver - just opened
6. Amex charge card - been with them for about 18 months, almost a year with their gold card (fee coming soon). I run a lot of business expenses through it, get a lot of cashback and generally like their service.

My plan to get a decent rate on savings is to put away £200/month on my HTB ISA (2% + 25% bonus) and £300/month on my regular saver (6%). I doubt I'll be able to put away more than £500/month but if I can, I would consider an S&S ISA since the base rate is so low.

I want to get rid of (1) and (2). However, (1) is the only account I've held for a long time and (2) is my only revolving credit line. I would like to know what others would recommend to soften these blows to my credit file. Should I keep them? Or get a different credit card? In what order? Is it worth having a credit card if I intend to use my charge card (almost) exclusively for purchases? or should I do away with the charge card?

The key aim is to make myself as attractive as possible to a mortgage lender in 2-3 years.

System

You could:

Use FD as your day to day bank.
Keep the Santander current account as a backup only but don't use it.
See if you can convert the credit card to Zero for a backup / overseas use.
Only you can calculate the value of the Amex charge card.

theburningcat

Thanks, Heng. I already tried changing the credit card offer - Santander wouldn't let me without closing the account and re-applying.