Multiple Current Accounts - Why?

blue.peter

In another thread, I noticed this comment:

... its sensible to have a couple of spare accounts for several reasons...

I was wondering what those reasons are, and would be interested if someone would enlighten me, please.

In nearly 50 years, I've never found any need for more than one current account.

I did once find myself with two at the same time. This was largely because I couldn't be bothered to ask my employer to switch the bank to which my salary was being paid when I knew that I'd be leaving in a few months. I found it a bit of a pain in the neck to manage, and closed the old account very shortly after I left that employer.

Zero_Sum

Remember TSB's system failure?
All these threads complaining that Monzo has blocked their account & cant access money
Accounts get hacked
Lose your debit card on a night out or eaten by ATM during non working hours

Then theres the general playing the system of course

eskbanker

TSB's failure was undoubtedly the highest-profile one in (relatively) recent times but the truth is that all banks suffer incidents that compromise availability of their facilities, and these average about ten per month on an ongoing basis, as discussed at https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6063731/mps-demand-action-over-rise-in-online-bank-crashes

Just over three days into the year and we've already had threads reporting a fairly significant outage at Clydesdale/Yorkshire and also a lesser one for Halifax....

jonnygee2

Honestly in my days of frontline customer service my least favourite conversation was:

- Them: Hello, I'm abroad and my card has stopped working, how quickly can I get a new one
- Me: Well it'll take some time and have to go to your home. Do you have a spare card
- Them: No. I've no other card and no way to get any spare money

Funny how people would somehow think it's the bank's moral or legal responsibility to keep them constantly supplied with access to funds. It isn't - in some cases they are actually required to suspend access. If you don't have a spare card and your account gets frozen, card gets damaged etc then that's only your responsibility.

stehouk

You have been a forum member for 4 years and you asking this question, do you not read any of the threads ?

Robin9

There's a thread at the moment "HSBC has frozen my account" - the account holder says he's done nothing wrong. Maybe no/ maybe yes but in the meantime he can't access the funds in the account or pay his mortgage.

I run with three accounts and four CC.

born_again

It's amazing the number of people I speak to who say "You can't stop my card... How am I going to live". Well sorry as you have fraud on it, it's going to be stopped no matter how much you complain...

These days. I say you need at least 2 bank accounts & Credit card to cover any issues. Across Visa/Mastercard/Amex.
Given the Visa outage last year.

It's all well and good MP's blustering on about IT problems should not happen (true they should not) but as everyone knows. Computers go wrong and no matter how many redundant back ups there are. Problems will still happen. Which take time to resolve. And as it appears in the Virgin issue yesterday, It was possibly human error entering a wrong date on the tape run...

A_Random_Man

I have around 5 bank accounts I find it much easier to manage my money as I have separate accounts for separate things that's probably the reason why most have multiple bank accounts

jonnygee2

I guess for balance you could also mention the downsides of multiple accounts. Mainly around security. If you have a lot of different logins & pins, they become difficult to manage without taking shortcuts like repeating PINS or login credentials across different accounts, or writing the details down somewhere etc. And leaving accounts unmonitored is a risk of sorts too - current accounts should really looked at regularly (ideally daily) to check for card fraud or unexpected activity.

Also, if you regularly transfer amounts between several accounts, the overall picture can be harder to track and mortgage applications etc can be trickier too.

For these reasons I prefer to stick to two current accounts, both with instant notifications and login via email protocols (Monzo & Starling).

I still really think everyone should have at least two active current accounts, but just to point out that more is not without drawbacks.

Eco_Miser

jonnygee2 wrote: »

I guess for balance you could also mention the downsides of multiple accounts. Mainly around security. If you have a lot of different logins & pins, they become difficult to manage without taking shortcuts like repeating PINS or login credentials across different accounts, or writing the details down somewhere etc.

There are things called password managers that securely encrypt your passwords (and user names, and login urls) into one convenient file accessible by the only password you actually have to remember. Keep copies in offline locations safe from prying hackers.


Writing the details down on paper in a non-obvious way, such as dispersed throughout your address book using a simple coding system is remarkably secure.

Brewer20

"... its sensible to have a couple of spare accounts for several reasons..."

I've got a couple going spare atm, now we have the HSBC to switch to it would be rude not to use one of those.
A handy thing to have apart from the above if you are with TSB....