Best Current Account for large, fast transfers

kjs31

I have current accounts with 4 different banks at present; TSB, Lloyds, Santander and Kroo. 

I am in the process of buying a house and have a large amount of funds in easy access savings as I don't want to tie up the money as it will be needed at some point to buy the house. In order to take advantage of the best interest rates I have been opening up new easy access accounts as they appear and switching the money from lower rate accounts. In order to do that I have to transfer the money back to my linked account and then transfer to the new savings account. I am using my TSB account as the linked account currently but as there is a 25k daily transfer limit it takes 4 days to do 85k so thinking of changing my linked account.

Kroo seems to have a great limit of 250k but I haven't been able to link any of my savings accounts to it as none of them seem to accept Kroo.
Santander seems to be 100k but a 25k limit - does that mean I can do 4 x 25k transactions in a single day? 
Lloyds is as restrictive as TSB so Santander seems like the winner. . 

I then need to gather all of the money back into a current account and do a CHAPS payment to the solicitor when the time comes. Lloyds and TSB need me to go to a branch which is a complete pain given that most of the branches are closed. Am I correct in thinking that Santander will allow me to do it over the phone? 

wmb194

kjs31 said:

I have current accounts with 4 different banks at present; TSB, Lloyds, Santander and Kroo. 

I am in the process of buying a house and have a large amount of funds in easy access savings as I don't want to tie up the money as it will be needed at some point to buy the house. In order to take advantage of the best interest rates I have been opening up new easy access accounts as they appear and switching the money from lower rate accounts. In order to do that I have to transfer the money back to my linked account and then transfer to the new savings account. I am using my TSB account as the linked account currently but as there is a 25k daily transfer limit it takes 4 days to do 85k so thinking of changing my linked account.

Kroo seems to have a great limit of 250k but I haven't been able to link any of my savings accounts to it as none of them seem to accept Kroo.
Santander seems to be 100k but a 25k limit - does that mean I can do 4 x 25k transactions in a single day? 
Lloyds is as restrictive as TSB so Santander seems like the winner. . 

I then need to gather all of the money back into a current account and do a CHAPS payment to the solicitor when the time comes. Lloyds and TSB need me to go to a branch which is a complete pain given that most of the branches are closed. Am I correct in thinking that Santander will allow me to do it over the phone? 

Barclays. It offers free Chaps payments, though note there's a £20 fee if you change or cancel one, and you can set them up online.

https://www.barclays.co.uk/help/payments/payment-information/chaps-payments/

southone

"Santander seems to be 100k but a 25k limit - does that mean I can do 4 x 25k transactions in a single day?" Yes you can larger can be done on phone after doing security stuff

jim1999

Santander say there are no charges for CHAPS payments on their Edge accounts

friolento

Starling have pretty generous daily limits, too. In theory up to £1m.

All banks will do CHAPS transfers. Most will charge for it. Barclays seems to do them for free.

wmb194

jim1999 said:

Santander say there are no charges for CHAPS payments on their Edge accounts

That's useful to know but unfortunately Santander's website says you have to do it by telephone banking or in branch.

https://www.santander.co.uk/personal/support/ways-to-bank/chaps-payments

kjs31

Thanks all. I'm wondering what the benefit is of having a Kroo account if no savings accounts will link to it. I opened it for the decent interest initially but that's lagging behind now from a savings perspective (I accept that it's decent for a current account). 

SiliconChip

If you're in an area that has a Metro bank branch you can make Faster Payments up to £250,000 in branch. In theory you can also do it over the phone but I'm not sure what security measures you'd need to pass in order to be able to do that.

retiredbanker1

I would also ask the OP to be careful - a lot of money deposited from various sources then being asked to pay away immediately could look suspicious and result in an account blocking.

Don't leave everything to the last minute when concluding your purchase.

GeoffTF

You can do £100K Faster Payments over the phone with Santander. If you have done all your checking (FCA Register, £1 test payment etc) it may not even go to security. Large online transactions are liable to get your online access blocked, and you will have to phone security to get it back. Multiple £25K online transactions are guaranteed to give trouble. You will have to make lots of phone calls to security to fix that. Starling allows £1 million Faster Payments, but I do not have any experience of them:

https://help.starlingbank.com/personal/topics/uk-payments/what-is-the-maximum-amount-i-can-send-via-a-bank-transfer/

GeoffTF

A further point here is that if you are doing £85K+ transactions, I would suggest that you stick to the big banks, which narrows down the field.