Your experience with Secure Trust Bank, Close Brothers & Aldermore?

Albermarle

GeoffTF said:

These small banks are not part of the name checking service. With Santander, I can transfer small sums to them online. For large sums, it is best to ring them. I get long security quizzes, but that is better than having the transaction wind its way through security, or, worse still, being locked out of my account. It is important to search for the bank in the FCA resister, and get the web address from there. MSE should have done all the checking for you, but your bank may not be happy with that. It is best to double check anyway.

I have had no problems with on line transfers of a few grand from Nationwide to Aldermore , so it varies from institution to institution.

JGB1955

I've had no problems with Aldermore.  I put them alongside Paragon and Charter Bank as good, dependable, safe places to put my money.

GeoffTF

Albermarle said:

GeoffTF said:

These small banks are not part of the name checking service. With Santander, I can transfer small sums to them online. For large sums, it is best to ring them. I get long security quizzes, but that is better than having the transaction wind its way through security, or, worse still, being locked out of my account. It is important to search for the bank in the FCA resister, and get the web address from there. MSE should have done all the checking for you, but your bank may not be happy with that. It is best to double check anyway.

I have had no problems with on line transfers of a few grand from Nationwide to Aldermore , so it varies from institution to institution.

By large sums, I meant more than a few grand. Santander supports Faster Payments up the £25K online, but have hit problems with payments less than that. I have had no problems with telephone Faster Payments up to £100K. I expect that I can still transfer more than that in one go if I use CHAPS, but I have not done that for several years.

refluxer

GeoffTF said:

By large sums, I meant more than a few grand. Santander supports Faster Payments up the £25K online, but have hit problems with payments less than that. I have had no problems with telephone Faster Payments up to £100K. I expect that I can still transfer more than that in one go if I use CHAPS, but I have not done that for several years.

This issue with Santander has been mentioned on here before and it seems to be an issue with their security measures.

I bank with Barclays (who are also part of the Confirmation of Payee scheme) and have never had a single online payment that I've made to any of the savings accounts I've opened with various 'challenger' banks (similar to the ones in this thread and who aren't part of the scheme) blocked.

In terms of being confident that account details are entered correctly, I find that, more often than not, a small test payment can usually be made first in order to verify that everything is OK.

While vigilant security is a good thing, if my bank forced me to use phone banking every time I wanted to make a 4-figure payment to another bank, then I would probably switch.

GeoffTF

refluxer said:

GeoffTF said:

By large sums, I meant more than a few grand. Santander supports Faster Payments up the £25K online, but have hit problems with payments less than that. I have had no problems with telephone Faster Payments up to £100K. I expect that I can still transfer more than that in one go if I use CHAPS, but I have not done that for several years.

This issue with Santander has been mentioned on here before and it seems to be an issue with their security measures.

I bank with Barclays (who are also part of the Confirmation of Payee scheme) and have never had a single online payment that I've made to any of the savings accounts I've opened with various 'challenger' banks (similar to the ones in this thread and who aren't part of the scheme) blocked.

In terms of being confident that account details are entered correctly, I find that, more often than not, a small test payment can usually be made first in order to verify that everything is OK.

While vigilant security is a good thing, if my bank forced me to use phone banking every time I wanted to make a 4-figure payment to another bank, then I would probably switch.

The payments do not get blocked, they get delayed by a few days. That is annoying if you have £80K waiting in your current account. If they do get blocked, it is usually possible to get that fixed by getting put through to security.

I do not think there is any problem with 4-figure payments online. Large 5-figure payments, yes, but that is understandable with all the push fraud. Most other banks will not allow £100K Faster Payments at all.

Thrugelmir

GeoffTF said:

These small banks are not part of the name checking service. 

The banks aren't part of the clearing system. Close Brothers uses Natwest as their clearing bank partner for example. 

refluxer

GeoffTF said:

The payments do not get blocked, they get delayed by a few days. That is annoying if you have £80K waiting in your current account. If they do get blocked, it is usually possible to get that fixed by getting put through to security.

I do not think there is any problem with 4-figure payments online. Large 5-figure payments, yes, but that is understandable with all the push fraud. Most other banks will not allow £100K Faster Payments at all.

Ah, apologies - I presumed that you'd had to resort to phone banking as a result of a blocked or queried transaction. From my experience, it's actually not uncommon for some payments to take up to 24 hours to show in a destination account with certain banks, depending on how that bank does it's business. 

I think you'd struggle to make a single £100k faster payment from a lot of banks, TBH. Barclays, for example, have a daily payment limit of £50k and Nationwide limit individual online payment transactions to £10k.