Downside to current account switching?

forgotmyname

Downside, your account will only show as being opened recently instead of having an account for x number of years. A fussy loan provider may prefer it if you had your account for a longer time?

I switched and got a higher overdraft limit. I didnt care about the overdraft either way. As long as there was a small buffer just in case.

Downsides for me was switching a joint account and them asking my wife for proof of ID.
They had already started the switch and provided the debit cards, when they arrived i queried why they were asking for proof of ID as the account was due to go live in a few days.
They said the cards were a mistake and the switch was on hold until proof of ID was supplied. OK.
A few days later it switched without us providing the ID for her.

Be careful if your partner is a home maker and everything is in your name.

We cannot be the only family without photo ID?

Archi_Bald

forgotmyname wrote: »

Downside, your account will only show as being opened recently instead of having an account for x number of years. A fussy loan provider may prefer it if you had your account for a longer time?

If you never intend to take out any loan or other credit, it doesn't really matter how long you have held a bank account. In any case, it's entirely within your control which account to switch.

TickersPlaysPop

Do you guys ever wonder why we are forced like performing monkeys to jump through hoops to get a good interest rate? Does it not annoy you all?

Santander... ever wonder why a Spanish bank massively at threat due to toxic debt in Spain is doing so well in the UK ? It is supposedly a separate bank with no link between UK and Spain... but let's see when the EU takes another stumble in the near future... your money will be protected by the government scheme... but my experience of the Icesave scandal almost lost me a house purchase when I had to wait months to get my money back. Yeah... it's all safe but it can take a long time to get your money back.

The banks do this for themselves so I'd like to know what motivates them to make us all jump through hoops to get a fair rate of interest. If this is a tax dodge I'd be even more upset... or is this a way to make their capital balance sheet look better against the leveraged loans they have dished out?

Selena8

Hi all,

I'm thinking about opening any old account that I'm not interested in keeping just so that I can close it & switch to another bank account (and get the perks for switching).

I was wondering if anyone knew if there are any requirements about how long the account you're switching from needs to have been open before you can switch from it in order to be eligible for the rewards associated with switching?

In theory, could you have a bank account open for just a week before closing it & switching to another bank (using the switch service)?

I appreciate that this might depend on the specific bank (I'm thinking of switching from M&S to Halifax) but I cannot seem to find any information about this in general, for any accounts.

Many thanks in advance if anyone has any advice.

All the best,
S

colsten

There's no minimum requirement though realistically it will take some time before you are ready to switch. You need to have your debit card, and most switches require DDs. I wouldn't switch without all DDs having been taken at least once. To know what's really going on in the account, you ideally also have online access so you can see your balance and transactions.

colsten

TickersPlaysPop


Santander UK is ring-fenced from Santander Spain. The FCA would have to approve any funds moving out of the UK.

There is no Government scheme protecting your money in banks. It's the FSCS that does, and the FSCS is an industry scheme.

FSCS has very clear timescales by when how much money will be paid back - In most cases, for deposits, FSCS aims to pay compensation within seven days of a bank, building society or credit union failing. They will pay any remaining deposit claims, which are likely to be more complex, within 20 working days.

You can't compare FSCS with the Icesave situation - for starters, Icesave was not covered under a UK scheme.

I am not sure what sort of a "tax dodge" you had in mind when banks pay us better interest rates on small amounts of money. Yes there are some hoops to jump through if you want the better rates but nobody is forced to have these accounts. You can opt for perfectly normal savings accounts and lower rates if the effort is too much.

jimjames

TickersPlaysPop wrote: »

Also, i have seen at least one of the banks saying that you only get the cash payment if it is your main current account... so having 2 current accountsituation won't always work.

Cheers all

Which bank says that? I've not come across any such requirement.

The only negative which is fairly minor is that DD switchover isn't always seamless. I guess I'm probably extreme in that I have a lot of DDs and have done many switches but there have been a couple where a DD hasn't been taken as expected.

TickersPlaysPop wrote: »

Do you guys ever wonder why we are forced like performing monkeys to jump through hoops to get a good interest rate? Does it not annoy you all?

No it doesn't. It actually means I can get a decent rate because I can be bothered to make an effort. If I was lazy I'd have to settle for 0.5%, instead I can get 10x that. If they were forced to pay the same rate to everyone then we'd all get 0.25%, I'd definitely be very annoyed if that happened.

TheShape

As Halifax doesn't require any DDs on the account, with luck, you could probably set up a donor account, open Halifax, initiate the switch and have your £100 by the end of the month.

I personally wouldn't just keep switching just to get the switching incentives though because you will run out of those pretty soon. Regular savers, 3%+ interest, monthly rewards are worth keeping accounts for.

takman

TickersPlaysPop wrote: »

Do you guys ever wonder why we are forced like performing monkeys to jump through hoops to get a good interest rate? Does it not annoy you all?

Santander... ever wonder why a Spanish bank massively at threat due to toxic debt in Spain is doing so well in the UK ? It is supposedly a separate bank with no link between UK and Spain... but let's see when the EU takes another stumble in the near future... your money will be protected by the government scheme... but my experience of the Icesave scandal almost lost me a house purchase when I had to wait months to get my money back. Yeah... it's all safe but it can take a long time to get your money back.

The banks do this for themselves so I'd like to know what motivates them to make us all jump through hoops to get a fair rate of interest. If this is a tax dodge I'd be even more upset... or is this a way to make their capital balance sheet look better against the leveraged loans they have dished out?

There is a very simply reason: it's all just marketing to attract new customers, it's as simple as that.

The banks based rate is 0.25% so anything more than that should be considered acceptable for a savings account. When they offer 5% interest on accounts they are actually loosing money by doing this so that's why they only offer it on small amounts of money. It's the same as them offering a £100 bonus to switch to them. When people see savings accounts offering at most 1.0% interest they think that accounts offering 3, 4, 5 or 6% interest are amazing.

The reason then have minimum pay ins is, direct debits, switching requirements etc is because they want customers to use these accounts as their main accounts. Once they has these customers they can offer them credit cards, loans, mortgages, overdrafts etc which makes them money.

So it doesn't annoy me to jump through hoops because if it wasn't part of a marketing scheme and there were no "hoops" then they wouldn't offer these accounts at all. Plus it's not exactly difficult or time consuming to meet the requirements.

jimjames

forgotmyname wrote: »

We cannot be the only family without photo ID?

I'm not sure. I can't imagine there are many families that don't drive or have passports.