The Top Easy Access Savings Discussion Area

soulsaver

ToTP: Top (of The Pots)  ranked-by-rate Easy(ish) Access accounts Top 10(ish).

Links & availability checked as at 16.00 14/01/24

Note: This is a snapshot and isn't maintained: For latest data (and morel info.) see the original doc. linked at the very bottom of this post, in the signature box.

1 Metro Bank Limited Edition Instant Access  5.22% £500 min (10/11) **Risk? Discussion here.**

2 Ulster Bank Loyalty Svr  5.20% £5k+ (29/09)

3 Charter EA Issue 48 now 5.13% (£5k min) (12/01)

4 Cahoot Simple Saver 5.12% (09/10)

5 Kent Reliance Easy Access Account Issue 67 5.11% (£1k min) (10/01).

6  Cynergy Online EA iss 69  5.10 % (24/11)

7 Leeds BS Limited Issue Online Access Account (Issue 54) 5.10% £1k min (11/01)

8 Virgin Money Defined Access E-Saver Iss 20  'Tri' 5.07% (08/12) 

9 Paragon Dble Access Iss5 5.05% £1k min (22/12) 

10 Close Brothers EA Issue 2 5.05% £10k min (03/01)

11 Family BS OL svr (6)  5.04% £100 min (27/09)*

* Family BS first entered 27/09, was overtaken but has held the rate ever since; has re-entered as others have       gone NLA or lowered rates.

J63320

friolento said:

…
So It seems checking the Reference now happens at all banks, and provides a match when using the actual name on the account. At least with Skipton, but probably with others, too. This is a major improvement. Thanks again for pointing this out.
…

Does anyone know whether payments to ‘Skipton Building Society’ will still work, or do I need to change them to use my own name?

Bridlington1

mebu60 said:

So It seems checking the Reference now happens at all banks, and provides a match when using the actual name on the account. At least with Skipton, but probably with others, too. This is a major improvement. Thanks again for pointing this out.

Not an improvement that I was looking for! Don't want all the payees to be listed as my name in Santander, always put them as the institution the funds are going to. Otherwise gets a bit tricky finding them again for subsequent payments. 

I know what you mean, for payees listed as my name I normally rely on the payment reference to tell me which account it is without having to memorise account details, in the case of Skipton BS it's just another number so it becomes harder to find the correct payee quickly. For now at least it's still letting you set up payees using "Skipton Building Society" as the payee name so the change can be currently be ignored if you wish, but I can imagine it could become a bit of a pain if they stopped accepting Skipton as the payee name, particularly if some of the other building societies followed suit.

Having said that some of the other banks/building societies now have the option to add nicknames to payees (which Santander could do if they wanted), which in effect negates the drawback of not being able to tell which account is which by checking the account name/reference whilst keeping the advantage of reducing the number of payments going to the wrong account if you type the reference incorrectly.

janusdesign

mebu60 said:

So It seems checking the Reference now happens at all banks, and provides a match when using the actual name on the account. At least with Skipton, but probably with others, too. This is a major improvement. Thanks again for pointing this out.

Not an improvement that I was looking for! Don't want all the payees to be listed as my name in Santander, always put them as the institution the funds are going to. Otherwise gets a bit tricky finding them again for subsequent payments. 

I have a column in my account interest spreadsheet on Excel that shows the payee # for each open account - though @Bridlington1 is right that having nicknames would be useful - where I can, I use the reference to contain a nickname, but for these BS accounts that already use references, you can't do that.

allegro120

J63320 said:

friolento said:

…
So It seems checking the Reference now happens at all banks, and provides a match when using the actual name on the account. At least with Skipton, but probably with others, too. This is a major improvement. Thanks again for pointing this out.
…

Does anyone know whether payments to ‘Skipton Building Society’ will still work, or do I need to change them to use my own name?

Yes, it should work.  Once it's set up and you've made a payment it's there, you don't need to change it.

Futuristic

Just deposited into Skipton from Chase, got email confirming deposit 2 hrs later. Used my name as payee as instructed, also on Chase it gave a pop up saying this account payee requires a reference which is first time I seen that. 

allegro120

Bridlington1 said:

mebu60 said:

So It seems checking the Reference now happens at all banks, and provides a match when using the actual name on the account. At least with Skipton, but probably with others, too. This is a major improvement. Thanks again for pointing this out.

Not an improvement that I was looking for! Don't want all the payees to be listed as my name in Santander, always put them as the institution the funds are going to. Otherwise gets a bit tricky finding them again for subsequent payments. 

I know what you mean, for payees listed as my name I normally rely on the payment reference to tell me which account it is without having to memorise account details, in the case of Skipton BS it's just another number so it becomes harder to find the correct payee quickly. For now at least it's still letting you set up payees using "Skipton Building Society" as the payee name so the change can be currently be ignored if you wish, but I can imagine it could become a bit of a pain if they stopped accepting Skipton as the payee name, particularly if some of the other building societies followed suit.

Having said that some of the other banks/building societies now have the option to add nicknames to payees (which Santander could do if they wanted), which in effect negates the drawback of not being able to tell which account is which by checking the account name/reference whilst keeping the advantage of reducing the number of payments going to the wrong account if you type the reference incorrectly.

Yes, FD and Natwest Group allow nicknames, which is very useful.  The problem with FD is that you can't have the same nickname for multiple reference codes of the same account, which is the case with a few BSs.  But the worst in my collection are Chase and Lloyds Group (app versions), you have to click on each to find out what it is.  Chase is particularly bad for this.  I guess the reason for these inconveniences is that not many people have dozens of accounts and are making payments to themselves, so this is not the issue the banks will want to look at.

gt94sss2

Talking of making payments from Santander to Skipton, I also noticed a change this time.

In the past, I used an existing Santander Payee for Skipton and just updated the reference for the new Skipton account number.

Now Santander won't let me change the reference number but insisted i set up a brand new payee

intalex

gt94sss2 said:

Talking of making payments from Santander to Skipton, I also noticed a change this time.

In the past, I used an existing Santander Payee for Skipton and just updated the reference for the new Skipton account number.

Now Santander won't let me change the reference number but insisted i set up a brand new payee

Same with First Direct, where I had to choose Skipton BS from a list of large organisations (which prepopulated their account details), and then had 2 boxes to fill out - payee name (mine) and reference (9-digit Skipton account number), and the money was across when I checked a couple of hours later (on Friday). No nickname for this payee now or with past accounts.

friolento

mebu60 said:

So It seems checking the Reference now happens at all banks, and provides a match when using the actual name on the account. At least with Skipton, but probably with others, too. This is a major improvement. Thanks again for pointing this out.

Not an improvement that I was looking for! Don't want all the payees to be listed as my name in Santander, always put them as the institution the funds are going to. Otherwise gets a bit tricky finding them again for subsequent payments. 

I know what you mean, and there's an easy workaround, at least in the current Santander:app, and in Santander online banking.

STEP1: do the full CoP (if you care for CoP at all), using your actual account name. Once CoP has been successfully passed, go to

STEP 2: edit the account name to something that uniquely identifies your account. Repeat the CoP, it will now fail, accept it anyway.

Unfortunately, it looks like Santander will take away the option to edit the account name in their new app. If they really do this, I might change to Natwest / RBS, who allow a nickname for payees.