£85,000 Savings Deposit Limit and how to protect

Jim2019

Hello, I am wondering what people who have lots of spare cash or business tax money do to protect themselves from a bank collapse and are only covered for the first £85,000 of money in a bank account. Are there insurance policies out there that you can take out to insure your savings against a bank collapse? How does a Solicitors or Accountants client account handle the fact that they are exposed from a bank collapse where there may be several hundred thousand pounds in the bank account.
Thanking you all in advance.

eskbanker

As an individual the two most obvious ways to protect substantial cash savings in that sense are to put them all in NS&I (which has effectively unlimited Treasury protection) or to spread them around multiple institutions to keep the amount in each one below £85K.

Also worth pointing out that anyone with over £85K in cash form for anything more than a short period really ought to be considering using investment to prevent loss of real-terms value to inflation.

Interesting question about what businesses do, but not one I know the answer to!

18cc

Basically there is a temporary high balance protection for property sales but otherwise the client is only protected up to the first 85 k irrespective of where it is held e.g. in a solicitors client account

https://www.ilfm.org.uk/site/blog/ilfm-blog/ls-new-limit

alanq

18cc wrote: »

Basically there is a temporary high balance protection for property sales but otherwise the client is only protected up to the first 85 k irrespective of where it is held e.g. in a solicitors client account

https://www.ilfm.org.uk/site/blog/ilfm-blog/ls-new-limit

Not only for property sales and not for all property sales.

https://www.fscs.org.uk/your-claim/temporary-high-balances/

polymaff

Jim2019 wrote: »

... Are there insurance policies out there that you can take out to insure your savings against a bank collapse?....

Tried this in 2008. Nothing off the shelf. The only insurer who would quote asked for a premium of 2.5% of the sum covered.


And would only cover funds in the Halifax. :rotfl:

eskbanker

polymaff wrote: »

Tried this in 2008. Nothing off the shelf. The only insurer who would quote asked for a premium of 2.5% of the sum covered.


And would only cover funds in the Halifax. :rotfl:

Just out of curiosity, when in 2008 was that? I imagine that the premium in December would have been rather different from January!

polymaff

eskbanker wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, when in 2008 was that? I imagine that the premium in December would have been rather different from January!

It was around March of 2008. What spurred me was an offering of 9.25% bonds by the Halifax on the U.S. markets - which I took to be a clear indication of imminent collapse.