The Top Regular Savers Discussion Thread

Bridlington1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82134876#Comment_82134876

I try to get the best of both worlds if I can, open immediately but if it's still available at the end of the month and quick and easy to refresh I'll refresh to put the maturity date at the end of the month, I've done this with Ecology recently, as well as Skipton, Manchester, Newcastle etc among many others in the past.

There's also an element of refreshing accounts if available for a while to push the maturity dates on to make maturity dates slightly more spaced out throughout the year. Harpenden and Monmouthshire at 6% may get targeted if still available in winter due to a shortage of funds at that time and to prevent a surge in cashflow throughout mid-late summer.

alfred64

Tipton - Save and grow

You could only have either one or the other.

Building societies like the Tipton & Coseley Building Society treat different opening methods of the same account issue (e.g., the branch/postal version and the Tipton App version) as separate variations of the same product.

Tipton treats the Branch/Postal version and the Mobile App version as two distinct "Issues" or operational tracks of the same underlying product. Under the standard terms and conditions of their regular savers, customers are restricted to holding only one active regular saver product per person at any given time.

You were not allowed to double your monthly savings limit (e.g., putting £200 in the branch and an additional £200 in the app).

dcs34

If building societies want to treat the different 'versions' of their regular saver accounts (with distinct sets of T&Cs, product summaries, product codes, product web pages) as actually being the same account then they need to state this clearly and plainly in the T&Cs, or better in the product summary under "how do I open". It is neither fair nor reasonable to expect customers to be familiar with unsaid rules nor to compare to other account types to have to predict or interpolate their approach.

Enough building societies have been 'caught out' by this exact issue in recent months that any decent product designer should be aware of this as an issue (surely they should be tracking their competitor's mistakes and innovations), and it should form part of a standardised checklist when scrutinising the T&Cs before product launch (in the same manner as "have we calculated the AER correctly" and "have we spelled 'variable rate' correctly").

Hey at this point if this is beyond the wit of the building societies then they could actually make use of their "community feedback groups" (which at worst are potemkin, and at best are "how would you feel about a 5% regular saver on a scale of 1 to 10" talking shops) and crowdsource/outsource scrutiny of their T&Cs before full launch. I'm sure many on here would happily do it in exchange for early access to decent accounts!

lr1277

As an aside, has anyone compared building society sizes by assets held? I found it fascinating.

A few weeks ago, I googled:

list building societies by size.

A spreadsheet was returned with 42 entries.

The biggest was Nationwide with 296 thousand million that is 296 billion.

The smallest was Penrith with 171 million. So quite a difference.

Anyway here are some asset sizes for recently discussed building societies:

12th - Progressive - 2.2 billion

15th Monmouthshire - 1.7 billion

27th Tipton & Coseley - 668 million

37th Buckinghamshire - 348 million

40th Beverley - 226 million

41st Earl Shilton - 188 million

All figures provided by the Building Societies association. The spreadsheet gives the month and year. Mostly from 2025 but some from 2026.

clairec666

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82135163#Comment_82135163

This is the perfect place to nitpick the finer details of the T&Cs - we'd quickly uncover any potential grey areas

wmb194

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82135134#Comment_82135134

Tipton discussion
Suffolk BS - formerly Ipswich - has online and branch/post versions of the same RS. It allows you to open one of each in sole name and it states explicitly:

"You can only hold one Online 1 Year Fixed Rate Regular Saver (30.11.2027)."

"You can be the first named holder on one 1 Year Fixed Rate Regular Saver (30.11.2027)."

alfred64

Tipton

90% of our customers would recommend us

The other 10% are on MSE forum

flaneurs_lobster

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82135168#Comment_82135168

No doubt true, but since T&Cs form the basis of a legal contract that exists between BS & punter, shouldn't they be being eyeballed by proper, qualified lawyers?

masonic

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82135207#Comment_82135207

Consumer rights law and regulation exists to remove the need for costly lawyering of T&C. They should be adequately comprehensible to a layperson, and if there is any reasonable uncertainty as to what a term means, it must be interpreted in the manner most favourable to the customer.

dcs34

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82135207#Comment_82135207

If the standard is to apply the meaning as interpreted by a reasonable person, well I've met plenty of lawyers in my time who would fail to meet that qualification… 😉

But also one presumes that is already happening, yet clearly these issues persist.