Which bank for me?

colsten

Oliver99UK wrote: »

Any budgeting/spend tracking? (although I could use Yolt as a 3rd party for this)

Even if you were offered a budgeting app by your bank (most don't), you'd need to ensure that it doesn't tie you to that bank. You want to be able to freely switch accounts in the future, and you want to be able to include accounts from other places in your budgeting. I.e. in essence, you want an independent app like Yolt for your budgeting.

If I say "you want", I assume you'd prefer not to be locked into the company whose current account suits you best at present. I could be totally wrong though, and you may not care

EDIT: seems I might well be wrong. If so, I must say, I am totally flabbergasted.

Oliver99UK wrote: »

(and I like to keep it all in one provider where possible)

Why would you want to do that? Do you only shop in the same supermarket? Only in one clothes shop? Only go to the same club or cinema? Buy your shoes from the same shop you buy your food from? Have your investments with a bank who offer you a limited range of investments and charge higher management fees than a specialist investment platform? Etc etc etc. Talk about putting yourself into a straitjacket!

colsten

rainbowskies wrote: »

It won’t let me edit my above post using my phone!

I just wanted to add, aside from the main banking app, Santander also do a wallet app which shows you how much you have spent using your debit card and where. All the places you’ve shopped at are separated into catergories and it makes it easy to see where you have spent/wasted your money. I find it quite handy. The ‘food’ section of mine was a real eye opener. Need to add another to my new year’s resolutions list ...

You can get this sort of thing from independent apps, such as Yolt. The big advantage of the independents is that they let you use multiple payment sources, and you don't lose the functionality as and if you change bank or credit card company. Some banks are slowly realising that if they do offer budgeting apps, they need to support more than their own accounts. But even those that do (HSBC, Barclays, for instance) don't come close to the functionality and breadth of supported companies that you get with an independent.

I appreciate it may not matter to you and you may only ever want to be a Santander customer (I am one, too, btw, but they are not my only bank, nor do they offer everything I want under one roof. None of them does, in my experience).

rainbowskies

Ooh, thank you Colsten!

I find the Santander wallet app useful but like you say, it only shows me Santander transactions. I have products with three banks so it would be nice to get both my current accounts and credit card transactions in one app. I shall definitely have a look at Yolt (and whatever others are available) Thanks again for the tip!

System

For me ethics are important. Ethical Consumer rates Triodos very highly - but a current account with them costs £3 a month and there are few frills and no Apple or Google Pay. Nationwide and the Co-operative Bank are well rated as is Metro Bank. The big high street banks are right at the bottom.

I am with the Co-operative Bank and use software on my computer to create and manage 'pots' of money.

Something to think about?

Oliver99UK

scgf wrote: »

For me ethics are important. Ethical Consumer rates Triodos very highly - but a current account with them costs £3 a month and there are few frills and no Apple or Google Pay. Nationwide and the Co-operative Bank are well rated as is Metro Bank. The big high street banks are right at the bottom.

I am with the Co-operative Bank and use software on my computer to create and manage 'pots' of money.

Something to think about?

That’s what attracts me to Nationwide, as they’re very highly rated as an ethical building society, no big banker attitude etc.
If they updated their internet banking and removed those silly unpaid/paid D/D fees then there would be no contest for me I think.

zagubov

As mentioned before, I doubt you'll get better advice here than on the main site.

gt94sss2

Oliver99UK wrote: »

That’s what attracts me to Nationwide, as they’re very highly rated as an ethical building society, no big banker attitude etc.

How ethical any organisation is is debatable - certainly (inho), Nationwide are a lot less ethical then they used to be with their

- senior management being paid more than previously;
- policy of keeping savings rates low in favour of mortgage customers; and
- branch closures (19 in the past 3 years)

All in all, its actually being run more as a bank these days despite technically being a building society - and despite having a nice app/website etc, some of their processes are quite antiqued