Joint account switch

DanielsRNCEL

Good Morning all,

I've switched banks over the past few years namely using HSBC, Santander & Lloyds.

I'm looking at switching again to capitalise on the switch offers out there. 

However it seems things may have changed since I last switched. 

It seems I cannot simply switch a joint account to another bank to create a joint account. I have tried Natwest and Lloyd's, both you can only do via going into branch. Or apply for a single account then add on another person to make it a joint account. 

The lloyds deal ends tomorrow so won't be able to open in branch by tomorrow. 

Has anyone done the other method previously? Does it affect (credit wise) either person as they won't have an account for a short period of time I assume? 

Thanks 

etienneg

I don't understand your last sentence, unless you have misunderstood what you can and cannot do with switching.

You can switch a sole account to a sole account. You can switch a sole account to a joint account. But you cannot switch a joint account to a sole account.

Therefore, if you have a joint account at the moment, you need to open a new joint account to switch it into. With some banks this could be done by opening a sole account, then adding someone else to make it joint. But only then can you switch your existing account into it. So neither of you would ever be without an account, even for a short period.

BTW, if you only have this one current account at the moment, it would be good for you to get another one (or more than one) that you keep. The reason is that sometimes an account gets locked or the web site goes down or in some other way it becomes unavailable for a period of time. If it's the only account you have, you have no access to any money until the issue is fixed. If you have some money in a separate account (at a completely unrelated bank), then at least you have access to some funds.

MikeJXE

Why are you switching joint accounts and only getting one reward between you ?

If there are two of you why not switch a sole account each and get double rewards ? 

eskbanker

DanielsRNCEL said: 

It seems I cannot simply switch a joint account to another bank to create a joint account.

Just to be clear, it's never been possible to create any sort of account by switching as such, the process has always been to open an account and then switch into it, so the issue you refer to is with opening rather than switching....

MikeJXE

Why bother with joint accounts, open sole accounts and make double money