moving large sums of money

d63

although i am in the happy position of having inherited a shared interest in some property from my late mother which was recently sold at auction, i now have some £400k or so in my barclays current bank account accruing 0 interest. i have transferred most of it into their everyday saver account which generates a none too generous 0.3%, whilst i try to spread it around half-a-dozen or so better saving accounts up to the £85,000 in each.
the snag is their security team has now pounced twice on some of the attempted transfers. it is, of course, nice of them to take such good care of my cash, but it is also a great nuisance to have to keep phoning them up to unfreeze the hold they've put on a transaction
is there some way to finesse the system by trimming each transfer to just under the maximum of £10k allowed by their faster payment service?
i suppose i could do a chaps wossname to move the money in larger chunks, but since i will need to this 4 or 5 times, that is going to cost £100 or so in fees.
any suggestions as how to best proceed?

londoninvestor

d63 wrote: »

is there some way to finesse the system by trimming each transfer to just under the maximum of £10k allowed by their faster payment service?

Having worked in a bank (but not Barclays, and to be fair only heard about the process at second hand) I would be worried that they specifically pick up repeated transfers just under the limit, and investigate them.

DigForVictory

Try talking to the bank in advance so they know what you are doing, when & why & can't honestly claim not to know what you intended and/or if you were under duress or anything complicated?

I know we're all wildly into technical solutions but sometimes human to human contact can make the money lending laws easier to negotiate around.

Just if you get any offers from a helpful Nigerian prince, the correct answer is "sorry - mum wouldn't approve".

xylophone

Had you considered opening a NS&I account and transferring all the cash into it in one go rather than in dribs and drabs?
You could use a personal cheque drawn on your Barclays current account?

https://www.nsandi.com/our-products

You can hold it all there safely and earn more interest than Barclays provide while you think what to do with it?

18cc

One option you might consider is sending a cheque or paying in a cheque to the other institutions this works well for large amounts as it doesn't trigger the fraud checks orf faster payments

LobsterMemory

Just to say that I was in a similar position last year with Nationwide and had to split £480k with my 2 brothers. 32 faster payments of £10k bang bang after each other and it was done in 20 minutes

agrinnall

I'd agree with xylophone both about using NS&I and paying by cheque (you'll probably have to move the money back to your current account), but the restriction is that from NS&I accounts you can only move the money to your nominated account, so if you decide you want to spread it around other accounts you'll need to do multiple transfers.

Missus_Hyde

d63 wrote: »

although i am in the happy position of having inherited a shared interest in some property from my late mother which was recently sold at auction, i now have some £400k or so in my barclays current bank account accruing 0 interest. i have transferred most of it into their everyday saver account which generates a none too generous 0.3%, whilst i try to spread it around half-a-dozen or so better saving accounts up to the £85,000 in each.
the snag is their security team has now pounced twice on some of the attempted transfers. it is, of course, nice of them to take such good care of my cash, but it is also a great nuisance to have to keep phoning them up to unfreeze the hold they've put on a transaction
is there some way to finesse the system by trimming each transfer to just under the maximum of £10k allowed by their faster payment service?
i suppose i could do a chaps wossname to move the money in larger chunks, but since i will need to this 4 or 5 times, that is going to cost £100 or so in fees.
any suggestions as how to best proceed?

I can sympathise with the OP, I've had largeish sums of money stopped when trying to move them and been subjected to the "Fraud Pep Talk"; I realise the bank is only doing their job, but it does become rather wearing when one simply wants to make a simple transaction and they make such a performance over it.

I've found the best thing is to ring up the bank and tell them before actually making any large transactions; when we had our extension built, I told the bank I would be making large payments to my builder during the course of the project and I didn't expect there to be any trouble making the payments. To be fair, there wasn't, so it was worth while my doing that, to enable the money to go out without any problems.

18cc

For what it's worth I have had fewer 'fraud checks' when using their app to transfer large amounts than when using online (desktop) banking. I think the app is more secure and they 'know' it's you.....

That said, I was once subject to a 'we know it's you but we just wanted to check you hadn't been called out of the blue by a stranger and asked to transfer the money' talk...

18cc

Funnily enough and correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think you can pay into the usual NS&I accounts (direct saver etc) by cheque. There is one account that allows cheques to be paid in but this has to be managed by post (not internet) I think...

d63

this is just to say thank you to everyone who has responded.

i think perhaps i will try again with the multiple 10K FPS once more and if the fraud people pounce for a 3rd time (despite that i did speak to them over the phone after the first time and did my best to reassure them that i was not under any duress) i will try the ns&i idea and send a large cheque for their income bonds account which allows such a method if you download and print off one of their forms and even has a slightly better rate (1.15%) than the now very old direct saver account with a pound or two left in it that i have, but as 18cc kindly pointed out does indeed seem to not allow cheques, well, there is no corresponding form to download anyway.