Best banks in the uk?

Well if you want to judge a bank. I think you have to take 3 key factors into account:

Stability & Safety - How well are they weathering the current crisis?

Quality of Customer Service - Which banks will help you when you're in trouble, and which ones will close their doors?

Interest Rates & Other Benefits - Which banks offer the best returns?



*Stability & Safety.*

At the moment this is probably the most key factor. While the savings protection scheme will ensure you don't loose your savings in a UK bank, recovering your money will be a huge inconvenience - so needless to say you need a safe bank.

The 5 main Bank groups in the UK are:
Royal Bank of Scotland (Royal Bank of Scotland, Natwest),
Lloyds TSB (Lloyds TSB, Bank of Scotland, Halifax),
HSBC
Santander (Abbey, Bradford & Bingley)
Barclays

Royal Bank of Scotland is having a very hard time. They're absolutely huge, but size isn't everything. Some other answerer has told you to stay with Natwest, as he 'hasn't heard anything bad about them', please ignore this advice. Natwest is part of RBS and RBS has been in the Financial Times as much as any other bank. Their share price has fallen so heavily in the past year, that the value of the bank is now a quarter of what it was a year ago. Thats a fall of 75% Alarm bells should be ringing.

Lloyds TSB is in a medium position, It has agreed to takeover HBOS, so now Halifax and Bank of Scotland will be part of Lloyds. Its willingness to take on bad banks shows Lloyds in a very strong light, but taking on such a giant bad bank (HBOS was far bigger than Lloyds) has made Lloyds risky. Its share price has fallen 80% in the past year accordingly.

HSBC has weathered the current crisis very well too; being very international and slightly smarter, HSBCs share price has only fallen by 15% in the past year. A very safe bet.

Santander/Abbey are a hug international group that have bought most of a bad bank recently: Bradford and Bingley. So this also suggests that Abbey is a strong highstreet bank that you can trust your money with. Their share price has fallen 33%

Barclays has recently bought part of Lehman Brothers who died in the USA. Barclays has had a tougher time than HSBC, and its share price has dropped 50%

Using the share price as an indicator of the stability of the banks, I therefore rank the banks (and their sub banks) as the following for stability:

1. HSBC
2. Abbey
3. Barclays
4. Royal Bank of Scotland
5. Lloyds TSB

All in all, these 5 are fairly likely to survive the financial crisis, most of the bad banks have been bought or have collapsed, leaving only the strong remaining.

However not just the big banks offer basic accounts with a debit card, there are 'direct' banks too, which operate purely on the internet or via phone, instead of using high street branches. These include First Direct (part of HSBC) and Smile.co.uk (part of the CO-OP Bank). Because these banks are far smaller and less complicated; they haven't been entangled up in the sub prime crisis the way large banks have, and so are also very safe.

*Quality of Customer Service*

In a survey by BBC's WatchDog, Smile.co.uk (CO-OP) was voted the UKs most customer friendly banks, with First Direct coming 2nd. The survey was bad news for the big banks though, as on average only 50% of customers were satisfied by their services. This survey highlighted Abbey as the worst bank, with 80% of customers being dissatisfied. HBOS was also given a poor rating.

In the JD Power survey, banks came in the following order in the following order: the Co-op, Nationwide, RBS, Alliance & Leicester, Halifax, NatWest, Lloyds TSB, Yorkshire Bank, HSBC, Bank of Scotland, Barclays, Clydesdale Bank and Abbey


*Interest Rates*

To compare rates offered by different banks you can visit MoneySupermarket.com and very quickly compare the interest rates that banks are offering on a wide range of accounts.


**Overall**

Overall if you want safety, go with HSBC, Abbey or Barclays. If you want customer service, go with smaller banks Smile.co.uk or Nationwide. If you want great rates then check out price comparison websites to see what banks are offering for you. My personal preference would be to go with HSBC - or more specifically, First Direct - which offers the type of account you want, and ranks high in customer service & rates - effectively making it the best bank.

I hope this helps,

Simon Oates

Hands down Nationwide, they are not a bank so treat you well, they have no serious concerns relating to the current financial climate, if you do internet banking, they give a sweet little chip and pin machine you use at home to confirm a new pass code each time log onto your banking account, great piece of mind.

Best bank by far is First Direct ( its part of HSBC) - its always for last 20 years been voted best bank by its own users...
most transactions done over phone- or internet - always very helpful all call centres are in the uk - answered by people who have been trained properly

and as part of HSBC can use their branches for over the counter stuff

Nat West is part of the nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). That why you havent heard there name once in all this banking crisis Stephen.

Barclay's bank seen to be riding the Storm very well and the good news is i bank with then

Nationwide Flexaccount does that. What's more, if you use the debit card to draw cash from overseas ATMs, there are no charges.

The ones that aren't collapsing already? Thank you Obama/Raines and Company! I'm not voting for you!

McCain/Palin '08!
Hero Before Zero!

HSBC Is doing pretty good and so is barcleys.
i would say barcleys atm
they are the only ones not suffering from the credit crunch!

xx

River banks would be better

stay with natwest. i havent heard there name once in all this banking crisis stuff...im with hbos so god help me!