Bank account with good online records

CSMR

I am looking for a bank current account with the following requirements:

• Good online banking service including ease of logon
• Complete transaction records accessible online
• Export of transactions to standard formats
• Debit card with contactless payments
• Reasonable charges and exchange rates for travel: international transactions, and use of international ATMs
• Expected to be around for at least 20years
• Reasonable fees and charges in general
• Use of email for posted documents, or if posted online, no time limit for access of these documents

Problems with existing account (HSBC)

• Hard to access data that is more than a couple of years old.
• Relies on statements which is an inconvenient format, and requires an administrative process of downloading them in time.
• Very much paper based, and to get old data you have to pay and they will send you statements.

I think the problems have to do with their being on legacy mainframes and not having got round to the huge task of modernizing their systems.



Things I do not care about:

• Interest rates
• Special offers

Grateful for any pointers.

agrinnall

CSMR wrote: »

• Expected to be around for at least 20years

Let me gaze into my crystal ball...no, it's all fuzzy I'm afraid.

Shakin_Steve

agrinnall wrote: »

Let me gaze into my crystal ball...no, it's all fuzzy I'm afraid.

If it clears, can you check if I’ll still be around in 20 years? Please.....

CSMR

It's reasonable to expect an established bank to be around in 20 years, and not reasonable to rely on a new internet startup to be around in 20 years. I don't know why you are being silly and annoying about this. Any firm in this list will meet this condition for me:
Barclays, Adam & Company, Coutts, HSBC, Metro Bank, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, RBS International, Santander, Silicon Valley Bank
(Taken from https://help.xero.com/uk/DirectFeeds-UK ; don't need direct feeds necessarily but it's a measure of technical competence.)

Senseicads

CSMR wrote: »

Problems with existing account (HSBC)

• Hard to access data that is more than a couple of years old.

I bet this is more to do with the data protection act than being on legacy systems.


Or it could be that they have upgraded their systems and haven't migrated the data from their legacy systems to their new shiny sparkly systems.


Why don't you ask them the question on their data retention policies?

agrinnall

CSMR wrote: »

It's reasonable to expect an established bank to be around in 20 years, and not reasonable to rely on a new internet startup to be around in 20 years. I don't know why you are being silly and annoying about this. Any firm in this list will meet this condition for me:
Barclays, Adam & Company, Coutts, HSBC, Metro Bank, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, RBS International, Santander, Silicon Valley Bank
(Taken from https://help.xero.com/uk/DirectFeeds-UK ; don't need direct feeds necessarily but it's a measure of technical competence.)

Every bank was a start up once, and I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of banks created in the last 200 years no longer exist as an independent entity. And there were times a few years ago when several of the banks on your list looked like they wouldn't last another 20 years.

As for Silicon Valley Bank, a) I've never heard of them (although I see they are big in the US and do have some sort of UK presence), and b) they appear to be a business bank, so if it is a business account that you need you should say so, as that puts a different slant on your requirements.

CSMR

This is a personal account. We got sidetracked with discussions of longevity. I am interested in a personal account and therefore Silicon Valley bank is ruled out.

To get back on topic, the main thing I want clean access to data without a lot of administrative work. This could be via an online system that gives access to data. But even emails with statements attached would be an improvement. And export to CSV or other formats is very important and would mitigate the need for good statements as this process could be done quickly once a year. So I am looking for banks that have some of these features. HSBC does not.

Plus

I don't know about the OP, but I think we can't say anything about the 20 year requirement due to lacking crystal balls. Even if a bank still trades, it can have updated its systems to not meet the requirements, or have been taken over by someone else who then migrates customers to their IT.

So let's reframe this in terms of banks that exist today. The requirements that stand out are:

1. Complete transaction records accessible online
2. Export of transactions to standard formats
3. Use of email for posted documents, or if posted online, no time limit for access of these documents

which boils down to how do different banks do their online banking.

The one I find most interesting is #3. I have paper statements on everything, not because I really like paper but because I get a permanent record without doing anything. I don't have to login, I don't have to download or print statements, they just arrive in a pile at my front door that I can open when I feel like. If I don't open them because I'm away the pile gets bigger but I still get the same record.

I'd be very interested if there's a bank that emails statements rather than sending you a message to tell you they are downloadable from their site that you have to login to (needing you to dig out your security token or receive a phone calls), and disappear after N months or if you close the account. Probably they would need to be encrypted, but I can handle that. It would be even better in some machine-readable format that I could spreadsheet.

It may be that Open Banking is just the ticket - I could automate downloading statements from all my accounts in one go - but that remains to be seen. In the meantime a bank with sane online statementing would be very handy.

Robisere

I don't see where your problem lies, Plus.

I have no problem logging in to my bank, takes all of 2 minutes if the desktop, laptop, phone or tablet is already booted up. Maybe 4 minutes if not. All my statements are saved to a secure file as a PDF and each one is printed and filed. Every April I save 12 months of statements and these are kept for 6 years. This has saved me from 2 aggressive companies who had to be convinced that I owed them nothing after repaying a debt on time. It also helped me in the past, to obtain a refund from the HMRC and another from a previous Council.

I do not want emailed bank statements, thank you: ask yourself which is most risky, the emailed statement with all your details in it, or the bank email which informs you that your statement is ready to access, should you be able to logon and access it?

I don't have to "dig out a security token or receive phone calls" I have no idea where that one comes from, please explain why you believe that! I just input my ID and password and I have access to all my accounts.

Bank is TSB.

RG2015

NatWest has 7 years of history online. This can be accessed for any 365 day period with the 7 year window and can be viewed online and downloaded to:

Excel/Lotus123/text(csv file)
Microsoft Money (OFX file)
Microsoft Money 97 only (OFC file)
Quicken 2001 onwards (OFX file)
Sage Line (OFX file)

7 years of statements are stored online and can be viewed online and downloaded as a PDF file.

The Select account is free but there is no email communication facility.

CSMR

Robisere wrote: »

I don't see where your problem lies, Plus.

I have no problem logging in to my bank, takes all of 2 minutes if the desktop, laptop, phone or tablet is already booted up. Maybe 4 minutes if not. All my statements are saved to a secure file as a PDF and each one is printed and filed. Every April I save 12 months of statements and these are kept for 6 years. This has saved me from 2 aggressive companies who had to be convinced that I owed them nothing after repaying a debt on time. It also helped me in the past, to obtain a refund from the HMRC and another from a previous Council.

You are saying you do not have our problem because you are exceptionally well organized. Good for you. I am not exceptionally well organized, quite the opposite, and require computer systems to organize data for me with as little manual bookkeeping as possible. I also would like more computer-friendly protocols like csv or bank feeds to analyze data and potentially upload to accounting systems.