How much does your bank balance impact how the bank treat you?

Aminatidi

Perhaps a slightly odd question but bear with me.

I have several accounts with Lloyds.

• A current account which tends to float between £3-8K
• A "savings" account that holds £20K
• A credit card with a £10K credit limit

I also have £125K with IWeb which I'm mentioning as I don't know if it shows on some computer system in the bank as part of "overall funds this guy has with Lloyds Banking Group".

Now the reason for the question is I am looking at whether to move the £20K to another bank that actually pays interest, but if I do so I don't want to suddenly find Lloyds drop my credit card limit to £1K or somehow see me as a greater risk because I have less money with them.

I may be a bit old fashioned about banks as I've been with Lloyds around 30 years and I know people chop and change these days but I have very simple needs and they've been fine.

But their interest rates on savings suck.

DullGreyGuy

To answer the headline question... it'll depend on the bank and there may be official tiers of customers and unpublicised. If you take AmEx for example officially if you've held a "The Platinum Card" for long enough and spent enough on it (or you're an A list celeb) then you'll be invited to the Centurion Card. It certainly used to be the case however that if you were a bit below that threshold you'd start to get some of the secondary benefits like a personally assigned concierge assistant.

Explicitly to your question on card limits, these are set based on risk criteria. They wont immediately drop your limit in revenge for you moving your money away but its inevitable that with less sight  of savings they may consider you slightly more risky but that doesn't mean its sufficient to drop your limit. I have a £20k+ limit with Virgin on a credit card and dont think I've ever held any other product with them 

Bigwheels1111

Are you mad, 20k sitting with no interest.

Hit yourself in the head with a hammer.

5%-5.3% easy access is the min you should get. You are wasting £1000 a year.

If tax is the issue get an isa with low penalty ie 60/90 day loss of interest.

Select rate order

https://moneyfactscompare.co.uk/savings-accounts/easy-access-savings-accounts/?quick-links-first=false

ISA Fixed Virgin 5.75% 60 days interest fine to withdraw money

https://moneyfactscompare.co.uk/isa/fixed-rate-isas/?quick-links-first=false

ISA easy access 5.05%

https://moneyfactscompare.co.uk/isa/easy-access-cash-isas/?quick-links-first=false

They wont touch your credit card. My card have been at 15,600 12,500 & 5,500 for over 10 years.

Never changed.

You dont need to move banks for a better savings account.

Bank just want to treat you link a mushroom.

Keep you in the dark, warm and up to you waist in XXXX.

Rollinghome

If you are making them money by regularly using your card and reliably making payments as required, even better if you are paying them interest on a negative balance, then there is no way they will want to reduce your limit.  I've only ever had banks offering to raise my limit, regardless of whether I have a savings or current account with them or even regularly use their card.

Having cash with a bank doesn't mean you don't have a huge debt somewhere else and that would be of greater interest to them.

wmb194

My experience with Lloyds in similar circumstances but without carrying the same the cash balances is that you don't have to worry and I've never had the impression that it's paid any attention to my iWeb balances.

If you want a bank to pay attention to your stockbroking account's balance you should shift it to Barclays Smart Investor (prevously Stockbrokers), it really does. When it integrated Barclays Stockbrokers' balances into its internet banking I was suddenly promoted to being a Premier customer - I've never used Barclays as my main account - and began to regularly receive offers for large loans and regular telephone calls. When I transferred it all away it all stopped...

subjecttocontract

I have hundreds of thousands saved and invested but it ain't in any bank account earning didly squat. None of the banks that I hold an account with have any idea what I'm worth. My main account will recognise through my money transfers that there are large balances involved and as a result they seem to be offering me all sorts of things like private banking & loans at preferential rates.

wmb194

subjecttocontract said:

I have hundreds of thousands saved and invested but it ain't in any bank account earning didly squat. None of the banks that I hold an account with have any idea what I'm worth. My main account will recognise through my money transfers that there are large balances involved and as a result they seem to be offering me all sorts of things like private banking & loans at preferential rates.

Yeah. In my experience Lloyds doesn't seem to do much of this, though. Thinking about it, I have received rare calls about some Schroders investment tie-up it has.

allegro120

Aminatidi said:

Perhaps a slightly odd question but bear with me.

I have several accounts with Lloyds.

• A current account which tends to float between £3-8K
• A "savings" account that holds £20K
• A credit card with a £10K credit limit

I also have £125K with IWeb which I'm mentioning as I don't know if it shows on some computer system in the bank as part of "overall funds this guy has with Lloyds Banking Group".

Now the reason for the question is I am looking at whether to move the £20K to another bank that actually pays interest, but if I do so I don't want to suddenly find Lloyds drop my credit card limit to £1K or somehow see me as a greater risk because I have less money with them.

I may be a bit old fashioned about banks as I've been with Lloyds around 30 years and I know people chop and change these days but I have very simple needs and they've been fine.

But their interest rates on savings suck.

I don't think moving some money out will have any impact on your relationship with Lloyds or any other bank for that matter. 
I have credit card with Nationwide. My Nationwide current account has £0 balance since 2015. I now have 2 savings accounts with Nationwide, but for many years my balance across all NW accounts was £0.  However they keep offering to increase my credit limit, I just don't do it because I don't need higher limit.

I'd definitely move £20k elsewhere if I were you.

Kim_13

If you’re worried you could always open and max out a Club Lloyds Regular Saver, or the standard one if you don’t have or want a Club Lloyds account. They’re not bad rates and are fixed for a year so may become even more appealing if rates start to drop.

Section62

DullGreyGuy said:

Explicitly to your question on card limits, these are set based on risk criteria. They wont immediately drop your limit in revenge for you moving your money away but its inevitable that with less sight  of savings they may consider you slightly more risky but that doesn't mean its sufficient to drop your limit. I have a £20k+ limit with Virgin on a credit card and dont think I've ever held any other product with them 

I suspect - if anything - the opposite might be the case.  If they do have a system which monitors savings then the algorithm may be set up to identify customers with dwindling savings balances as potentially ideal candidates for more (to them money earning) debt-related products.

Lloyds rejected my application for a credit card while I was living off savings for a period of time.  They told me they could only make the decision based on income, excluding income from savings and investments.  With zero income from employment, pension, or benefits they couldn't be confident I'd be able to keep up with payments on the card.  I pointed out my (at the time) 5-figure savings with LBG - they said that wasn't relevant. (Which I fully understood)

...that hasn't stopped Lloyds, BoS and Halifax continuing to send me begging letters pleading with me to apply for a credit card, despite my savings balance with LBG dropping down to just what the RS accounts hold at any given time.

OP - find a better home for your £20k today.

Aminatidi

OK useful to know thank you 👍🏻

Hopefully it came across in the original message but it's a bog standard bank account and "platinum" Lloyds card even though it's green and the basic card far as I know.

I've no interest in thinking I'm a special customer nor do I care about black or gold cards as I stopped having a gold card when they wanted to charge for the privilege.

I'll check rates.

Recommendations welcome on who's actually a decent place for savings in so much as not offering "carrot" rates then dropping them and making it easy to open an account and withdraw money.

I'm not sending notarised copies of passports to some obscure bank 😀