Advice needed for Santander switching sole to joint account

crumpet_man

I have a sole 123 lite (which is in active use), wife has a sole 123 lite (which is in active use) and we have a joint everyday current account (not being used). 
Is there a way to transfer/switch accounts so that my 123 lite becomes a joint account and wife's sole 123 lite account is transferred/switched into it?  Would prefer to be able to do it all online without phone calls or going in branch although if I can fill in a form and post it that would be OK.

I would like to keep the account number and sort code of my 123 lite as I have it as a payee with a number of other banks.

It looks like I can open a new joint account online and switch one of the sole accounts into it but then I cannot see a way to get the other sole account switched to the new joint account.  Plus I would lose the account number from my sole 123 lite.  

Archi_Bald

It doesn't look as if you can avoid going to Branch for this. Though may be they can do video meetings to get round the present restrictions? 

If you already have an account, you can add or remove account holders by making an appointment at your local branch

https://www.santander.co.uk/personal/support/current-accounts/joint-accounts

crumpet_man

How about if I open a new joint 123 lite account and switch the wife's sole 123 lite into it which I should be able to do in the online application?  Then I can manually move my 123 lite direct debits to the new joint account and downgrade my 123 lite to an Everday account.

Archi_Bald

AFAIK, you'd have to manually 'switch' any Santander account into another Santander account. Meaning you'd have to transfer the money yourself, cancel SOs on the old account and set them up on the new one, inform and DD payees of the new account details, monitor that they use the new details, and your old account would stay open unless you close it. You would also not get any forwarding of any payments that might come into the old account at a later stage. 

As an alternative, you could use the formal current account switch to move the old account to a different bank, and then use the formal switch again to switch from the different bank to the new joint Santander account.

crumpet_man

Looks like you are correct, I thought there was a way to switch one Santander account to another online but it appears not.  I know there is a transfer option, which is a similar sort of thing but won't give an option to transfer a sole account to a joint, only to change account type i.e. from 123 to 123 lite.

I have opted for manually moving all DDs to the existing joint account and downgrade the two sole 123 lites to Everyday accounts.