Santander free forever bank account changes

GingerTim

More likely the closure of 123 Lite accounts.

GeoffTF

L999 said:

From Sky News. Santander has a nett loss of almost 23,000 customers. Wonder how many are due to their conduct related to 'Free Forever' accounts they've done a Uturn on !

Very few probably. Here are results from January, before this thread started in July:

Which banks are gaining and losing customers?

Banks that gained customers in 2024

    Nationwide Building Society: 22,622
    Barclays: 18,053
    TSB: 12,282
    Lloyds Bank: 10,018
    Monzo: 5,256
    HSBC: 2,445
    Co-operative: 1,100
    Starling Bank: 801
    Triodos Bank: 25

Banks that lost customers in 2024:

    Danske: -193
    Bank of Ireland: -350
    AIB Group (UK): -431
    Ulster Bank: -807
    RBS: -5,352
    Virgin Money: -4,832
    JP Morgan Chase: -1,883
    Bank of Scotland: – 1,606
    Halifax: -14,898
    NatWest: -18,322
    Santander: -19,274

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/33091489/bank-switch-millions-moved-accounts/

Nationwide was top and Santander bottom then too, with Santander losing customers at nearly the same rate now as it did then. (The data is for a 3 month period, despite the titles. This is the Sun!)

MeteredOut

With those figures, it makes sense why they're trying to cut costs and remove accounts/customers which either don't make them any profit, or reduce their average revenue per customer.

Futuristic

L999 said:

From Sky News. Santander has a nett loss of almost 23,000 customers. Wonder how many are due to their conduct related to 'Free Forever' accounts they've done a Uturn on !

Well they made significant changes everywhere like the retail 123 lite account and all other business accounts they had so it’s no surprise on the numbers. Bit like Chase who did same/top saving rate expiring and also lost a lot.

gt94sss2

L999 said:

From Sky News. Santander has a nett loss of almost 23,000 customers. Wonder how many are due to their conduct related to 'Free Forever' accounts they've done a Uturn on !

I don't know where Sky are getting their figures from but they don't match those officially published at https://www.currentaccountswitch.co.uk/media/iwlhfujt/cass-dashboard-q3-2025.pdf

Santander are still the biggest loser but the figures for some of the others appear totally wrong. Also the period covered is Q2 2025.

born_again

Figures will depend in many ways on what bribes banks are offering & who people have a donor account with to cycle round.

MeteredOut

gt94sss2 said:

L999 said:

From Sky News. Santander has a nett loss of almost 23,000 customers. Wonder how many are due to their conduct related to 'Free Forever' accounts they've done a Uturn on !

I don't know where Sky are getting their figures from but they don't match those officially published at https://www.currentaccountswitch.co.uk/media/iwlhfujt/cass-dashboard-q3-2025.pdf

Santander are still the biggest loser but the figures for some of the others appear totally wrong. Also the period covered is Q2 2025.

Q3 according to Sky:

"More than 265,000 current account switches have been made in the third quarter of this year, and some banks have benefited a lot more than others, new data from the Current Account Switching Service (CASS) shows. "

https://news.sky.com/story/money-latest-personal-finance-consumer-sky-news-13040934?postid=10438159#liveblog-body

phillw

L999 said:

Does anyone have any thoughts on taking a claim to the County Court services "Money claims online"? .. for santander renaging on "Free forever" marketing claim for which we entered into when applying and the subsequent acceptance of our business and the opening of the account and then the 20+ years of our business ... and then the subsequent banks effective 'breach of contract" by imposing charges. With the amount being claimed as losses ... based on a (provable) day rate for the time involved in the matter and time to to switch to an alternative free business bank provider? ..

I would go to the ombudsman first, as courts always prefer you to use arbitration etc first.

The county courts are pretty backed up, so it might take a year. Then you have the problem that the judge will be upset that you've wasted their time bringing a case where you've had a free product for 14 years that santander had already decided wasn't cost effective.

You can't force them into a contract where they have agreed to pay your day rate for switching to an alternative provider. So I'm not sure how you'd argue that they owe you that.

Any decent legal advice/representation will cost you considerably more than you'll recover.

I would talk nicely when complaining, and try to sell them the idea of giving me money to avoid going to the ombudsman.

amyfairweather

phillw said:

L999 said:

Does anyone have any thoughts on taking a claim to the County Court services "Money claims online"? .. for santander renaging on "Free forever" marketing claim for which we entered into when applying and the subsequent acceptance of our business and the opening of the account and then the 20+ years of our business ... and then the subsequent banks effective 'breach of contract" by imposing charges. With the amount being claimed as losses ... based on a (provable) day rate for the time involved in the matter and time to to switch to an alternative free business bank provider? ..

Then you have the problem that the judge will be upset that you've wasted their time bringing a case where you've had a free product for 14 years that santander had already decided wasn't cost effective.

You can't force them into a contract where they have agreed to pay your day rate for switching to an alternative provider. So I'm not sure how you'd argue that they owe you that.

Any decent legal advice/representation will cost you considerably more than you'll recover.

They don't need legal advice/representation in the small claims court.

Neither will a judge be upset that they've brought a case where they've had a free product for 14 years that Santander specifically said would be "free forever".

Note: Santander did not state it would be free for 14 years or 50 years or 500 years, they said 'forever'.  You still don't seem to be able to get your head around that yet, for some reason.

Forcing Santander to carry on offering these accounts is a non-starter.  Whereas suing them for the equivalent costs of £9.99 per month, plus fees, plus time wasted on all this, moving forward is most certainly not.

I suggested earlier in the thread suing for as many years ahead up to your state retirement date.

eskbanker

L999 said:

From Sky News. Santander has a nett loss of almost 23,000 customers. Wonder how many are due to their conduct related to 'Free Forever' accounts they've done a Uturn on !

GingerTim said:

More likely the closure of 123 Lite accounts.

GeoffTF said:

L999 said:

From Sky News. Santander has a nett loss of almost 23,000 customers. Wonder how many are due to their conduct related to 'Free Forever' accounts they've done a Uturn on !

Very few probably.

gt94sss2 said:

I don't know where Sky are getting their figures from but they don't match those officially published at https://www.currentaccountswitch.co.uk/media/iwlhfujt/cass-dashboard-q3-2025.pdf

The official CASS document is obviously likely to be more reliable than paraphrased and summarised versions elsewhere, but it does of course only relate to accounts that are being switched rather than opened/closed for other reasons.

However, in terms of interpreting the figure of circa 23k, the CASS report does helpfully share figures relating specifically to small business and charity accounts, as well as the personal ones which form the vast majority, i.e. 95/96%:



so it can readily be seen that switching of such accounts did increase by about four thousand between Q2 and Q3, although the firm-specific data isn't broken down so it's purely speculation as to how much of that extra 4k relates to Santander.