Best bank accounts (U.K)?My bank has increased its charges again to cover all the extras they offer that i don't use (holiday insurance etc) I am looking for bank account that will not have a monthly charge and one that offers a over draft. My credit rating is excellent and i have no debt. | |
You should be able to go to most banks and get a no silly frills account.
All banks have add-on's to the standard current account facility, which offers all sorts of other things, that they believe are useful to you. Sadly in most cases they are not. for these add-ons you have to pay a monthly charge, well cancel the one you got.
Given that you have a good credit rating it should not affect the overdraft limit you are currently holding, but the so called FREE overdraft limit (meaning an amount you can go overdrawn before you get charged interest) may disappear. in any case it is not Free as you are currently paying a fee.
My suggestion is to cancel the Add-On, the bank are not permitted to make you have such a facility.
Then look around the usual banks. Have you tried First Direct, s subsidiary of HSBC? their service is really good. Otherwise Barclay and yes the Co-op has frills free accounts. However, the drawback with the co-op is that they do not have many branches so not such a good idea. Forget NatWest, they are expensive on all counts. Lloyds bank have a bit of the building society mentality, in other words you will not get fair value but try to make you believe you do.
May I suggest you check out this website by Martin Lewis the finance savings Guru. http://moneysavingexpert.com/
You will get good advice from that website.
What is 'best' depends on your circumstances.
Money Made Clear is the consumer section of the Financial Services Authority's website (the regulator for banks and financial services in the UK). It provides unbiased, jargon free advice and has comparison tables on a 'by product' basis. It will ask you a number of questions before making a recommendation. Once you have identified the right type of account for yourself, you can them move onto the price comparison websites. Beware some of the comparison websites though, as some of them only give headline rates and do not give you the 'small print' until you contact the establishment concerned. I've listed three to keep you going, but there are a lot of them out there.
After you have done that, then move onto the particular establishment (bank/building society) website to see if the information provided by the comparison website is up to date and still suitable for you. You may find that the establishment may have improved rates, especially if by holding other accounts with that them entitles you to improved interest rate/additional features.
Best of luck.
Since you are not using those extra holidays insurance service offerred you need to pay your share of the charges to cover other overhead costs like staff costs to use the bank's services.
As you have no debts what is the purpose of the overdraft. Again if you do not use the overdraft and do not pay interest,you need to pay a monthly charge for your bank account. All banks are the same.
Halifax have been great to me so the Halifax.
