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

LHW99

Irrelevant to this I'm sure, but I've steered clear of Barclays since a family member who had received badly needed money from the sale of a car suddenly found it had disappeared from her Barclays CA. Over a bank holiday, of course, so no way of checking with them. It was finally discovered that Barclays had shifted the money into a rarely used savings account without permission / notification. They gave no indication that they felt their actions were unreasonable when challenged. All a long time ago now (pre-internet), but it put me off permanently.

wmb194

LHW99 said:

Irrelevant to this I'm sure, but I've steered clear of Barclays since a family member who had received badly needed money from the sale of a car suddenly found it had disappeared from her Barclays CA. Over a bank holiday, of course, so no way of checking with them. It was finally discovered that Barclays had shifted the money into a rarely used savings account without permission / notification. They gave no indication that they felt their actions were unreasonable when challenged. All a long time ago now (pre-internet), but it put me off permanently.

They're not common these days but some banks, IIRC including NatWest, used to offer sweep options that were triggered when balances hit certain levels. A quick Google suggests that Barclays still offers it to Wealth customers:

"Auto-sweep facility

If you leave more money than necessary in your current account, we can automatically sweep surplus funds into an interest-paying savings account."

https://www.barclays.co.uk/wealth-management/banking/current-account/#:~:text=If%20you%20leave%20more%20money,an%20interest%2Dpaying%20savings%20account.

subjecttocontract

Whenever there is bad news about banks it seems Barclays are always involved. The latest scandal involves Jes Staley ex Barclays chief who has been fined £1.8 million  and banned from holding any senior city role after misleading regulators.  

PosterBoy77

Section62 said:

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.

I don't see how explaining that I had obtained a large sum from remortgaging is unreasonable. It was the truth and Barclays accepted it verbally. I asked them if they needed anything else from me they should ask. I had done absolutely nothing wrong, unless paying my own money to another account is now considered a crime. If nothing else, I should have been given proper notice. The banking world seems full of unwritten rules. If you have too little money you are considered no good and if you have more than a few thousand you are suspected of being a criminal. The whole system is broken.

PosterBoy77

subjecttocontract said:

Whenever there is bad news about banks it seems Barclays are always involved. The latest scandal involves Jes Staley ex Barclays chief who has been fined £1.8 million  and banned from holding any senior city role after misleading regulators.  

Except for the inconvenience caused, being debanked by Barclays at short notice, it is no great loss. Dealing with Barclays these days is almost impossible.

PosterBoy77

LHW99 said:

Irrelevant to this I'm sure, but I've steered clear of Barclays since a family member who had received badly needed money from the sale of a car suddenly found it had disappeared from her Barclays CA. Over a bank holiday, of course, so no way of checking with them. It was finally discovered that Barclays had shifted the money into a rarely used savings account without permission / notification. They gave no indication that they felt their actions were unreasonable when challenged. All a long time ago now (pre-internet), but it put me off permanently.

No great loss. There are plenty of better banks.

LHW99

mikael said:

LHW99 said:

Irrelevant to this I'm sure, but I've steered clear of Barclays since a family member who had received badly needed money from the sale of a car suddenly found it had disappeared from her Barclays CA. Over a bank holiday, of course, so no way of checking with them. It was finally discovered that Barclays had shifted the money into a rarely used savings account without permission / notification. They gave no indication that they felt their actions were unreasonable when challenged. All a long time ago now (pre-internet), but it put me off permanently.

No great loss. There are plenty of better banks.

Indeed there are

They're not common these days but some banks, IIRC including NatWest, used to offer sweep options that were triggered when balances hit certain levels. A quick Google suggests that Barclays still offers it to Wealth customers:

Yes, I used to use one at Lloyds, but in the case of Barclays that wasn't requested / set up, they just decided that was where the money should be - not the case when another car was to be paid for in a couple of days!

Albermarle

subjecttocontract said:

Whenever there is bad news about banks it seems Barclays are always involved. The latest scandal involves Jes Staley ex Barclays chief who has been fined £1.8 million  and banned from holding any senior city role after misleading regulators.  

Even when I was a student ( many decades ago) Barclays were a pariah, and there were campaigns to boycott them, because of their links with the South African apartheid regime. 

Eco_Miser

jimjames said:

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.

I also have a significant portfolio with iWeb, and Halifax and Lloyds bank accounts. Halifax can obviously see my dividends arriving from HSDL (and would have seen the original debit card payments into Iweb), but recently both Halifax and Lloyds have been urging me to transfer my investments to their brands of HSDL. Maybe it's just coincidence.

Futuristic

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.

Work your way to £250K in Lloyds group (iWeb etc) and you can be eligible for their private banking. Essentially club Loyds with a relationship manager, probably some priority customer service line and a "private" card