Bank current account switching

Greensaver99

If you're an extensive user of online banking, I'd be slightly cautious about switching current accounts just because of financial inducements. I run several treasurer's accounts for small organisations, one with the Co-op, one with HSBC and one with Santander, where I also have my personal accounts.

Santander's website is excellent, but although the HSBC and Co-op sites have both had front-end facelifts, their underlying systems are old, not very intuitive and irritating to use.

Just a couple of quick examples, HSBC randomly drops beneficiaries that I've added if I haven't used them for a while, and I can't see a continuous list of transactions on screen, I can only see the last few and all the rest are in downloadable statements (.csv!) which are not calendar months. On the Co-op site, if I try to pay people between 8pm and midnight, it tells me I can't use the current date, but it doesn't just change to the following day, I have to do it manually on every payment! Minor things perhaps, but time-wasting and annoying and there are lots of other things I would change if I could.

Of course it's possible that it's only the business accounts that are like this, but Santander's online personal and business accounts work identically, and are quick, clean and flexible (and before you ask, I don't work there).

PRAISETHESUN

Good thing to keep in mind if you are switching your main account. A lot of people on the forums here are only switching for the incentives, and set up accounts with very minimal DDs, etc to qualify for the offers and then never actually intend to use the account as their main bank meaning if something goes wrong then it isn't really the end of the world, and can actually work in their favour through additional compensation, etc.

Also it could be a business account-specific issue that I'm not aware of - they might look the same on the outside but could use different systems under the hood.