Can only 1st years get a student bank account?

AmyTheThriftyStudent

Hi,

I went into Santander today, hoping to get a student account with a free 4 year railcard, and was told that I couldn't open an account as I was in my second year of study. They told me that the rules had changed, and now you can only open a student account in your first year of university unless you are switching from another student account.

Unfortunately I closed my HSBC student account in June so that I could open a Santander one - I thought I had to close one before I open another.

When I asked if the new rule only applied to Santander or was for all banks, I was told that it was for all banks due to some new regulations that had come in in the last 3-6 months. Does anyone what what these regulations actually are and if there is any evidence of them online?

Is there anything I can do now?

It would be great if the MSE article on Student Bank Accounts could be updated to include details of this so that others can avoid this situation.

Lokolo

I haven't bothered reading any other T&Cs of other banks, maybe you could do that.

But in Santander's T&C

You can open a new account or transfer from an existing Santander current account. The Current Account Switch Service (see Section 7) is available to use at any time; if you are not in your first year of study you must switch an account from an external provider using the switching service when you open your account. The course you are on must be a minimum of 2 years in length with a Higher Education Provider. For
example, Higher National Diploma (HND), Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor of Science (BSc), Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng), Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN).

So if you didn't close your HSBC account but instead switched, you would have been eligible.

I doubt its regulation, but instead to stop people opening multiple student bank accounts year after year.

AmyTheThriftyStudent

In response to Lokolo's hunch that it's not a legal requirement I scoured some other banks' T&Cs to see if there was one that would let me open a student account in my second year. NatWest has let me go through the whole application process online and has given me a provisional 'yes'. I'll let the forum know in a few days whether I have actually been successful and have a debit card for it etc.