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

AstonSmith

Credit might not be related to bank balance, what about the account itself?

If you had e.g. £20,000 in a current account with Bank A, and then transferred £19,900 to a savings account with Bank B... would Bank A consider it no longer worth the expense of running the account, and close it?

Albermarle

AstonSmith said:

Credit might not be related to bank balance, what about the account itself?

If you had e.g. £20,000 in a current account with Bank A, and then transferred £19,900 to a savings account with Bank B... would Bank A consider it no longer worth the expense of running the account, and close it?

If you just left £100 in it for the next 12 months, with no in/out then probably it would get closed.
If you continued to use it like a current account, then would normally not be an issue.

allegro120

AstonSmith said:

Credit might not be related to bank balance, what about the account itself?

If you had e.g. £20,000 in a current account with Bank A, and then transferred £19,900 to a savings account with Bank B... would Bank A consider it no longer worth the expense of running the account, and close it?

No.  I have had and still have many current accounts across all major UK banks running on £0 balance for years and none of them ever been closed.  If the account had no activity for few years banks usually send an e-mail asking you to make a transaction if you want to keep the account.  This warning is usually made well in advance.

GeoffTF

Middle_of_the_Road said:

GeoffTF said:

mikael said:

...and moved the remortgage money through the account several times to different savings accounts...

What does that mean? What did you actually do, in what timescale and for what purpose?

Seems quite clear to me. 

Had money from re-mortgage in Barclays account.
Wrote a cheque for same money to fund a savings account.
When a better savings rate became available, money from savings account was returned to Barclays.
Another cheque written to new savings provider.
Repeated as necessary.
Barclays asked why is this happening.
Barclays didn't like or believe response and closed accounts.

I have been doing that for over fifty years, though not usually with cheques nowadays, and so have millions of others. We have not had our behaviour questioned or our accounts closed. There is almost certainly more to it than that.

Section62

GeoffTF said:

Middle_of_the_Road said:

GeoffTF said:

mikael said:

...and moved the remortgage money through the account several times to different savings accounts...

What does that mean? What did you actually do, in what timescale and for what purpose?

Seems quite clear to me. 

Had money from re-mortgage in Barclays account.
Wrote a cheque for same money to fund a savings account.
When a better savings rate became available, money from savings account was returned to Barclays.
Another cheque written to new savings provider.
Repeated as necessary.
Barclays asked why is this happening.
Barclays didn't like or believe response and closed accounts.

I have been doing that for over fifty years, though not usually with cheques nowadays, and so have millions of others. We have not had our behaviour questioned or our accounts closed. There is almost certainly more to it than that.

If someone regularly moves larger sums of money through their account then the bank is probably not going to take too much notice.  In this specific case the poster was contacted by Barclays "...asking me why I was suddenly moving large sums of money..." (my bold) - which may imply that this kind of money (presumably a significant sum if it related to a remortgage) wasn't something they had regularly been putting into their account before (perhaps ever).

One of the KYC questions often asked is "how much do you intend to pay into the account?" - if they are monitoring account activity for fraud and crime prevention purposes and an individual account "suddenly" gets repeated large payments which don't fit the previous pattern then it is understandable (in this case) that an alarm bell might ring.

If the answers given in response to their "What's going on?" question aren't satisfactory (and from what the OP says, they probably weren't) then account closure without notice shouldn't really be an unexpected outcome.

jimjames

Aminatidi said:

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.
But their interest rates on savings suck.

I'm with Lloyds and H/BOS. None of my accounts have any significant balance held - generally less than £10. I move money in to pay bills and the balance is then near to zero. Never had any impact on services offered. I also have a significant portfolio with iWeb but maybe naively have always assumed that was invisible to the banks.

GeoffTF

Section62 said:

One of the KYC questions often asked is "how much do you intend to pay into the account?" - if they are monitoring account activity for fraud and crime prevention purposes and an individual account "suddenly" gets repeated large payments which don't fit the previous pattern then it is understandable (in this case) that an alarm bell might ring.

It is not unusual for me to move £150K+ though my account in one year. My bank has my transaction record dating back 30 years+ so their computer can see where that money came from. Moving my account would cause issues. Using multiple current accounts would also muddy the waters. My average current account balance is just a few hundred pounds, and I get cashback on my direct debits. Fortunately, the banks accept that they have millions of unprofitable customers.

Ocelot

wmb194 said:

Ocelot said:

GeoffTF said:

Aminatidi said:

I don't know if Lloyds think "he's got £20K in a savings account with us so we can see he's sensible"...

It is more likely that they think "he's got £20K in a savings account with us so we can see he's a sucker". Actually, I do not expect that they think about you at all.

Lloyds sometimes message me to say I could be getting a better rate (I have 15k or so earning 0.9% in an emergency fund).

I also find when I have over 100k in my current account (not for long, usually after a bond expires) a window pops up asking me to invest with their people.

I also had 50k in an Atom account after a fixed rate expired, earning 0.1%, and they emailed me saying I could get a better rate if I moved my money.

I suspect these are just automated algorithms.

Have you upgraded your current account to Club? If so, it has some better paying Club savings accounts e.g., one that pays 4% AER on three withdrawals per account year before the rate drops and might suit for an emergency fund.

https://www.lloydsbank.com/savings/club-lloyds-advantage-saver.html

Actually, that's not a bad idea, thanks. I do have a Club Lloyds a/c.

However, it's an account I regularly move money to and from.

I'm also looking for a home for the expired Atom money, but have been delaying for about a month because of the 40% tax I'd have to pay on it (I know 60% of something is better than 0% of something). I already pay hundreds of pounds on tax on interest a year. I am all ISA-ed up.

PosterBoy77

Section62 said:

mikael said:

Anyway they called me a few weeks later asking me why I was suddenly moving large sums of money. I told them and they seemed satisfied. However a few weeks later they closed all my accounts and barclaycards without notice.

A truly dreadful bank. Other banks have asked questions and have asked me to provide proof of funds and have been no problem thereafter.

If someone banks with Barclays, do not transfer any larger sums in and out of an account with them. 

If you willingly volunteered the information you were cycling the same (large) sum through the account multiple times then it isn't surprising Barclays did what they did.  Banks don't like 'odd' behaviour.  The lack of notice suggests they suspected some form of fraud, perhaps they simply didn't believe your story.

They probably didn't believe what I told them. The point is that they could have asked me for evidence if they didn't believe me, like several other banks have done. Why act so rashly without checking further?

PosterBoy77

dunstonh said:

Middle_of_the_Road said:

GeoffTF said:

mikael said:

...and moved the remortgage money through the account several times to different savings accounts...

What does that mean? What did you actually do, in what timescale and for what purpose?

Seems quite clear to me. 

Had money from re-mortgage in Barclays account.
Wrote a cheque for same money to fund a savings account.
When a better savings rate became available, money from savings account was returned to Barclays.
Another cheque written to new savings provider.
Repeated as necessary.
Barclays asked why is this happening.
Barclays didn't like or believe response and closed accounts.

Depending on the timescale, that could look like crossfiring.  Not very common nowadays but banks used to close accounts for crossfiring.

I had to Google the term, but it was certainly not crossfiring as funds paid out were fully cleared and were not paid back into the account for at least a week.