SmartSave / Chetwood Financial - why would their sort code be a Barclays account?

ingeardagum

I've opened an account with SmartSave.This seems to be owned by a bank called Chetwood Financial Ltd.

However, when I went to transfer the money, I noticed the sort code belonged to Barclays.

On the SmartSave Website it says the following:

"When transferring your deposit into your SmartSave account, you'll notice that the sort code belongs to Barclays. This is simply because we hold our business account with Barclays. This is nothing to worry about. All SmartSave deposits are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), the UK's deposit guarantee scheme."

Is this anything to worry about? If Chetwood are a bank, why do they need to hold a business account elsewhere? Possibly a silly question but would be sillier not to proceed with caution?

dunstonh

Building societies often use the services of clearing banks too.     All quite normal.

MarkFromCornwall

It's nothing to worry about.  Many building societies do the same.

(more important is not to take the word of a 'bank' that they are protected by the FSCS but check that yourself with the FSCS website).

refluxer

Ford Money also use Barclays as a clearing bank - as mentioned above, it's nothing to worry about.

The one thing you must do is to read SmartSave's paying-in instructions carefully and if you're told to include your bank account number as a reference, make sure you enter this correctly.