Transferring only incoming standing orders to new business bank account

Frazer4

Hello,
I’m self employed and to date have only used my personal current account for all business related transactions. As it’s a very straight forward business this seemed fine but I know for a number of reasons (breaching banks terms, clearer accounting etc) I really should have a separate business account..

The complicated bit is that some of my customers pay by standing order. From searching it seems that payments in can only be automatically transferred to a new account if it’s a full switch which would then close my existing personal current account. I wouldn’t want to do that clearly and presume it wouldn’t even be permitted as there is of course domestic spend that would be moved over.

Does anyone know if there is any way round this? At the moment I’m assuming the best course of action is simply to open a business account without any kind of switching, then inform the standing order clients to update the account details. Clearly I’d like to avoid inconveniencing them with this if possible but it seems the only way?

18cc

Well you could open a new personal account instead, and once you have transferred all domestic spending to that new account then ask the bank change the existing personal account to a business one...

Be aware (from experience) that asking customers to change s/o details is likely to lead a proportion either not doing it or cancelling completely.

Frazer4

Thank you, I hadn’t thought of that. So, just to confirm the order of events would be:

1. Open a new personal account with current bank or another bank.
2. Manually move all domestic spend to the new personal account (wouldn’t be hard)
3. Ask the bank (Santander) to change the existing personal account to a business one.

eskbanker

Probably worth getting explicit confirmation first from Santander that they'd be able and willing to convert a personal account to a business one without changing the account number....

18cc

Yes as eskbanker says check (anonymously!) first...

18cc

If Santander can't do that then another option is to proceed as 1 and 2 above and then:

3. open a business account with another bank and ask them to switch your existing current account (now containing just the business standing orders into it) to the new business account using CASS.

All payments into your old Santander account will be forwarded on for I think 3 years

Someone else can correct me if I am wrong.

Frazer4

Thanks very much for the advice everyone.

System

18cc wrote: »

If Santander can't do that then another option is to proceed as 1 and 2 above and then:

3. open a business account with another bank and ask them to switch your existing current account (now containing just the business standing orders into it) to the new business account using CASS.

All payments into your old Santander account will be forwarded on for I think 3 years

Someone else can correct me if I am wrong.

You need to open a business account.

I doubt Santander can/have the ability to convert a personal account to a business account. I also doubt any bank will switch a personal current account elsewhere to their business current account via the CASS.

Either keep the personal Santander one to catch anyone not remitting to the new details or transfer it to your personal current account & transfer out stray credits.

18cc

Many years ago I had a personal account in my name with Lloyds and they had no problem changing it to 'my name t/a business name'

Things may very well have changed since then of course

ps t/a = trading as

Frazer4

Heng Leng, from doing a little more reading I can’t find anything anywhere that specifically rules out using the CASS to switch from existing personal account to a business one though I think you may be correct. It wouldn’t be the worst thing though I’d need to make sure any stray standing order payments were transferred from the existing personal Santander account to the business account. It’s not the ideal situation but over time it would remedy.