The Top Easy Access Savings Discussion Area

Alicon88

Does anyone have experience with Monument?
I would like to give it a try but would be nice to have some opinions first 

Stargunner

CooperSF said:

Catch you later, Chip.

I will be sticking with them, as they are only around 0.1% behind the market leaders and their payments in and out are immediate and the monthly interest suits me.

Rollinghome

cadguy77 said:

Rollinghome said:

alrk said:

Who else transfers money in and out as quickly as Chip? I will give them a few more days but preparing myself to have to move out for a bigger %

How much cash do you need to access instantly?
With the many of the better paying accounts, they'll only allow withdrawals to a single designated account, most often the one used to pay in.  Which is likely to be your hub current account. Once there, if it's more than £20k you could well find it not so easy to move it on to another account instantly without security checks, especially if it's a new account. Could be stuck there for a day.
If so, keeping some with a bank offering the fastest transfers but paying a smidgeon less, and one or more paying the highest rates with withdrawal times you can live with, could be the way to go.

For me, a long term Santander account holder (from alliance and Leicester days), I can do 4x 25k transfers per day without triggering extra security check bar OTP confirmation 

Good for you.  (A long term account holder here too, Mrs R still has her freebie Santander shares from the Abbey takeover.)I can also do large transfers without security checks and £10,000 transfers without any OTP - sometimes.  

And that's been the problem with Santander, it's often difficult to understand the rationale.  Payments to payees that have been sent for years can suddenly be stopped without any notification that it's happened.  With other banks I use, they phone the customer immediately when they hold up a payment, or at least notify them in some way.

The other problem is the time it takes, in my experience up to 2 hours on the phone, and the extraordinary incompetence.  

Several times last year, I had payments stopped and then received an automated phone call asking for numbers from my postcode, then numbers from my DOB, and whether I had requested the payment.  Did that, and was told that my confirmation was noted, and I would now need to make the payment again. So logged in again, requested the payment, and was immediately logged out and my entire account blocked.  Took much of my day getting it sorted.

Recently, since wider use of COP, it seems to a little easier, but it's still a nail-biting experience using Santander, so though I still have a current account with them, I use it as little as possible.

I use several other banks without any problems whatsoever. The many people who have posted here after having similar problems with Santander are unlikely to be making it up. Nor would I doubt someone who says they haven't had problems with them.

boingy

Stargunner said:

CooperSF said:

Catch you later, Chip.

I will be sticking with them, as they are only around 0.1% behind the market leaders and their payments in and out are immediate and the monthly interest suits me.

They'll probably boost their rate sometime in the next week or so. No guarantees though. The good thing about Chip is that they apply the change instantly. Some of the others announce rates that don't take effect for a couple of weeks.

FishInGlass

SeriousHoax said:

cadguy77 said:

Rollinghome said:

alrk said:

Who else transfers money in and out as quickly as Chip? I will give them a few more days but preparing myself to have to move out for a bigger %

How much cash do you need to access instantly?
With the many of the better paying accounts, they'll only allow withdrawals to a single designated account, most often the one used to pay in.  Which is likely to be your hub current account. Once there, if it's more than £20k you could well find it not so easy to move it on to another account instantly without security checks, especially if it's a new account. Could be stuck there for a day.
If so, keeping some with a bank offering the fastest transfers but paying a smidgeon less, and one or more paying the highest rates with withdrawal times you can live with, could be the way to go.

For me, a long term Santander account holder (from alliance and Leicester days), I can do 4x 25k transfers per day without triggering extra security check bar OTP confirmation 

Alliance and Leicester that Brings back memories For me that was my very first place to save.
I used to go once a week with my pocket money that I had left Back in 1970s
My mum or dad used to take me.😛

How about Girobank. When I started work I opened an account with them. This was taken over by Alliance and Leicester and subsequently by Santanter.

oz0707

This bank paranoia about you getting defrauded is becoming a complete pita now. I understand they will be getting pressured from governments but it seems like every transaction now i have to confirm im not being scammed even if its a tenner to one of my own accounts with different bank or a payee ive paid many times before

friolento

oz0707 said:

This bank paranoia about you getting defrauded is becoming a complete pita now. I understand they will be getting pressured from governments but it seems like every transaction now i have to confirm im not being scammed even if its a tenner to one of my own accounts with different bank or a payee ive paid many times before

It's because banks have to reimburse people who got scammed. It's likely to become a lot worse soon, too, when the new PSR regulations kick in under which both, sending and receiving firms needing to split the costs of reimbursement 50:50. This will almost certainly mean that they will also check / block incoming payments, like Kroo already do. 

https://www.psr.org.uk/news-and-updates/latest-news/news/psr-confirms-new-requirements-for-app-fraud-reimbursement/

masonic

oz0707 said:

This bank paranoia about you getting defrauded is becoming a complete pita now. I understand they will be getting pressured from governments but it seems like every transaction now i have to confirm im not being scammed even if its a tenner to one of my own accounts with different bank or a payee ive paid many times before

It really varies by bank. I've not had any this year and have been shifting money between savings accounts more than ever before. I've given Santander a wide berth, as they seem to be the worst for holding payments.

Malchester

masonic said:

oz0707 said:

This bank paranoia about you getting defrauded is becoming a complete pita now. I understand they will be getting pressured from governments but it seems like every transaction now i have to confirm im not being scammed even if its a tenner to one of my own accounts with different bank or a payee ive paid many times before

It really varies by bank. I've not had any this year and have been shifting money between savings accounts more than ever before. I've given Santander a wide berth, as they seem to be the worst for holding payments.

Yes me too. I use Santander as my main current account but because of their reputation for stopping transfers I use my Nationwide account for all transfers and have never had a transfer held up. I use Nationwide as my nominated or link account for all savings accounts. The only transfers from Santander are to Nationwide.

Bridlington1

Personally I've never had any issues with Santander and have actually found it one of the easier accounts to use as a nominated account. I have bounced low 5-figure sums through Santander a fair few times, even to new payees that don't use CoP and not had so much as a delayed payment.

Then again I also haven't had any faster payments blocked across the board for over a year, though have in the past, having had a HSBC account frozen for 23 days in February 2022, Virgin frozen for 5 days the following month and a Halifax payment blocked a few months after that.

I've just come to accept that I will likely end up with blocked payments with most if not all of my banks at some point over the coming years so I just try to ensure I never become too reliant on a single banking group, particularly after having to de-link LBG from my financial affairs earlier this year. Consequently I have the bulk of my nominated accounts fairly evenly spread between Santander, Nationwide, Ulster, Metro and HSBC. Where possible I have multiple nominated accounts for each set of savings accounts, e.g. I have my Coventry accounts linked to different current accounts, Skipton's the same, Tandem is linked to nearly every current account I have that uses open banking etc and where possible I try to ensure that my most important savings accounts aren't all linked to the same bank so if any one of my main accounts gets frozen I can still access the bulk of my money regardless.