Bank switching rewards

RobinofLocksley

I’m a newbie to bank switching and have a few questions I am hoping someone with more experience might be able to help me with.

Is it possible to switch a joint bank account and still get the switching bonus? Appreciate this may vary from bank to bank but wondered whether anyone had experience of it. 

Once you switched and have received the bonus, the logical thing to me would seem to be to use that same account to switch to another bank to get another bonus. However, people who do this talk about having several current accounts which would suggest I’m missing something and moving the same account from one bank to another to get the bonus is not the way to do it. I’d be grateful for you views on this. 

Finally, I’ve got an account I no longer use (it is effectively dormant) and I’ve now set up the requisite number of DDs to that account. Appreciate this is perhaps an elementary question, but I have emails from the organisations to which the DDs go, saying the DDs are in place - do I need to wait for a payment to be made under those DDs before I switch or is the fact I have emails saying they’re  in place sufficient. 

Any advice would be grateful received.

RobinofLocksley

Bump… can any one help?

WillPS

Most switch bonuses will work for Joint Accounts, but doing so will exclude all joint account holders from other bonuses - with the exception of Nationwide which will allow one sole and one joint. For that reason (other than Nationwide) it's a pretty terrible idea if you're looking to maximise on bonuses; go for soles instead (except for Nationwide).

I have switched a joint account to Nationwide and got a bonus.

Your suggestion to use the account to work your way through the banks isn't a terrible one, but I'd advise you keep at least 1 long held (preferably your longest held) account open. It might make no difference but some lenders might see the fact that all your open accounts are very young as a problem.

One other pitfall of this approach is that some switch bonuses require you to keep the account open for 6 months or so in order to collect part of the bonus. This might then prevent you from being able to take up a short-lived offer if one became available - that said it's been a long time now since a really brief offer (like Yorkshire/Clydesdale's £250 offer) happened; most come and go fairly frequently and generally trend upwards in value.

Jami74

RobinofLocksley said:

Once you switched and have received the bonus, the logical thing to me would seem to be to use that same account to switch to another bank to get another bonus. However, people who do this talk about having several current accounts which would suggest I’m missing something and moving the same account from one bank to another to get the bonus is not the way to do it. I’d be grateful for you views on this. 

The reason I have kept accounts open is because they've offered me an ongoing benefit. For example, when I switched to Nationwide a couple of years back the 5% on £1500 for a year was worth keeping so in that case I opened a second account with Nationwide and switched that out. Same with Lloyds, received a switch bonus when I switched in to them, kept it open and got 6 free cinema tickets and a regular saver with a good interest rate, opened a second Lloyds account and switched that out. 

zipdip

Well I would like to switch banks and following Martins advise there are two banks a the moment paying you to switch,but there I hit a problem I am already a Nationwide client,so that leaves First Direct great so I tried to download their app on my Samsung android phone and no it would not download it seems it wants android 10 or better and my phone is 8,now my phone already has the Nationwide app and Santanders app,now there is no way I am spending £400 on a new phone to get £175 for switching

Nasqueron

zipdip said:

Well I would like to switch banks and following Martins advise there are two banks a the moment paying you to switch,but there I hit a problem I am already a Nationwide client,so that leaves First Direct great so I tried to download their app on my Samsung android phone and no it would not download it seems it wants android 10 or better and my phone is 8,now my phone already has the Nationwide app and Santanders app,now there is no way I am spending £400 on a new phone to get £175 for switching

Unfortunately you will find banks will cut off access to old software when it's not supported anymore. You don't need a £400 phone to run a compatible app but as 8 stopped getting security patches in 2021 and was released over 6 years back, I would be surprised if the others let you keep running it for too much longer. I can see Nationwide allow 7.0 or above which is crazy as that's even less secure but Santander did minimum 8 in July 22 and I suspect they'll jump to 9 very soon which will necessitate a new phone regardless. The Moto G14 is £110 on EE and runs 13 which will keep you going for years

boingy

zipdip said:

Well I would like to switch banks and following Martins advise there are two banks a the moment paying you to switch,but there I hit a problem I am already a Nationwide client,so that leaves First Direct great so I tried to download their app on my Samsung android phone and no it would not download it seems it wants android 10 or better and my phone is 8,now my phone already has the Nationwide app and Santanders app,now there is no way I am spending £400 on a new phone to get £175 for switching

You can get the Nationwide incentive even though you are an existing customer. As long as you meet their other criteria (check their T&Cs) you need to open a current account somewhere that is part of CASS and setup two DDs on that account then switch it to your Nationwide current account. There are plenty of options for a donor account. I've used Metro a couple of times because they are quick and easy to setup.

As for your phone I feel your pain. Recently I've had to replace a perfectly good phone because several apps were about to cut me off due to the android version. I'm a tight**** and don't need a high performance phone so I went for a Moto E13, currently £70 from Amazon and unlocked for any network. (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BVZSWMHG). It has Android 13 so should be good for a long while. It's only a matter of time before your Nationwide and Santander apps stop working on your phone too.