Allica Bank - recent experiences anyone?

komera

I opened a Fixed Term savings account with them a couple of days ago, and tried to transfer money to it, but my bank is indicating some issues when I try to transfer funds to the account. Has anyone else had any experience with them, good or bad

colsten

What kind of issues is your bank indicating?

Do you mean you get warning messages when you try to make a payment to the sort code, account number and Reference Allica have provided you with? If so, this is quite normal with some of the newcomer banks, and even with many longstanding Building Societies.

As long as you have used precisely the information Allica gave you, there should be no issue and you can ignore the warnings. If Allica allow more than one deposit into the savings account, you could also make a small test payment (e.g. £1), and send the remainder once you have reassured yourself that your small payment has indeed arrived as expected.

JohnatBiggleswade

My bank blocked my payment, and the fraud department said they would investigate to see if it was a scam. Eventually they said that it may be alright, but payment is at my risk. Barclays said that none of their customers has sent money to this bank.  I have made a decision that if its good enough to be recommended by MSE, and This Is Money, that's good enough for me. Anybody else had a funds transfer to Allica blocked\/

EdSwippet

JohnatBiggleswade said:

... Anybody else had a funds transfer to Allica blocked?

I have. First Direct. I've become quite used to this now. Every time I set up a payment to one of the newcomer banks I get a follow up confirmation call from some part of First Direct.

Usually it's a quick "Was this you?", "Yes, it was," type of interaction, but for some reason I got quite the interrogation on my Allica transfers, followed by a lecture on how scams work and a request for my confirmation that making this transfer would absolve the bank of all responsibility if it turned out that Allica is somehow just a front for Nigerian money launderers (if it is, it's a remarkably competent looking one!).

Once past this, First Direct made the payments, and they showed up fine in my Allica online account a short time later. One other data point: I used secure messaging to ask Allica a question, and got a very prompt and helpful reply. So on that one anecdote, their customer service seems good.

Notepad_Phil

EdSwippet said:
Usually it's a quick "Was this you?", "Yes, it was," type of interaction, but for some reason I got quite the interrogation on my Allica transfers, followed by a lecture on how scams work and a request for my confirmation that making this transfer would absolve the bank of all responsibility if it turned out that Allica is somehow just a front for Nigerian money launderers (if it is, it's a remarkably competent looking one!).

I got this scam talk a couple of days when I moved £1 followed by £4999 to another of my accounts. I wouldn't have minded if the other account was held by a different banking group, but this was a transfer between two Bank of Scotland accounts that I can see at the same time when logged in!!

Popsy25

Anything more on this? I'm hitting the same issue with First Direct. The woman I spoke to on the phone today said she'd never heard of it and it's going through by the sort of transfer that makes them nervous.

janusdesign

it's perfectly safe - they're FSCS protected to £85k

https://register.fca.org.uk/s/firm?id=0010X00004G4d2gQAB

Daliah

Popsy25 said:

Anything more on this? I'm hitting the same issue with First Direct. The woman I spoke to on the phone today said she'd never heard of it and it's going through by the sort of transfer that makes them nervous.

The woman at FD obviously hasn't done her research, otherwise she would know that Allica Bank is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority (FRN: 821851). A simple search of the FCA Register will give all the details, and she should know how to do such a search. If she truly said it makes them nervous, I would raise a formal complaint with FD as the woman you spoke to doesn't appear to be up to the job.

As long as you are using the details Allica gave you for making deposits, there is nothing to be concerned about. If your Allica account allows more than one deposit, you could make a first transfer of a small amount, say £1, and transfer the rest once you are satisfied that you have used the correct details.

FD, like any other bank, may still randomly hold payments, and it's good that they have procedures in place to check. It is, however, quite unacceptable that they scare people from making transfers to their own accounts.