Advice on banks - Tide vs Starling

[Sandy100]

Hello everyone,

As someone that's just taken the MVL route, I wanted to share my experience with the banks. The summary is:

If you're thinking of closing your company and have over £100,000, then don't bank with Tide. Switch your banking now (I used Starling).

The problem with Tide is that they have strict account limits and getting the limit raised is like getting blood out of a stone. It took me 10 days to get my balance limit increased (despite chasing daily), and then I discovered that they have payment limits too which are FIXED - there was simply no way for me to get funds out of my business savings account into Tide and then out again in a short time period. The Tide support was poor and often took a long time to respond.

The more I looked into it the more fed up I became with Tide, they're not a proper bank, there's no telephone number etc etc.

Starling by comparison (no, I don't work for them!) were brilliant. Account opening took a few days and there were no limit issues, other than needing to contact support to make a high value payment. I'd use them again.

Regards,
Sandy

[sal]

It's rather stupid to keep over £85k in one banking group, yet alone in a current account.

So most people won't even notice your issue with Tide, but thanks for sharing.

[ladymuck]

It's rather stupid to keep over £85k in one banking group, yet alone in a current account.

So most people won't even notice your issue with Tide, but thanks for sharing.

Depends on why you need it there.

[Maslins]

Without going into detail, I would second that TIDE have unfortunately proved utterly useless in our recent experience of liaising with them via MVL Online. Cashplus also have proved themselves very poor on more than one occasion.

I think a problem with some of these new challenger banks is that they get very good/efficient at doing 99.9% of the things you want a bank to do. However, throw something a bit out of the ordinary at them (eg "my company's gone into liquidation"), their clever automated systems can't deal with it, and they seemingly have no idea what to do/how to process it. Whilst the more traditional banks may be a bit lumbering at times, they generally have small specialist teams that deals with quirky things like this.

I don't recall any issues with Starling. Whether that's because we haven't had any cases with them yet, or have had a couple that they dealt with brilliantly so didn't stick in our mind, I don't know.

[rogerfederer]

I echo the £85k sentiment, as it's something I worry about too when shifting money to a main account in lieu of it being sent onwards to savings accounts.

I need to move from HSBC due to their appalling treatment of contractors and robotic semi trained calls from their Indian call centres.

Starling are a mobile-only bank. I can't quite believe this, but if I lose my mobile phone I've lost access to the business bank account. My understanding is that there is no provision for internet banking using a website. There's no backup method, yet 'Which?' and others have them as highly recommended.

Would you highly recommend a bank that isn't even protected properly for DDOS via akamai/Cloudflare and is accessible from known ToR relays? I'm not impressed with their security or accessibility and therefore question their integrity for providing service when their app or my phone goes titsup.

[sal]

Starling are a mobile-only bank. I can't quite believe this, but if I lose my mobile phone I've lost access to the business bank account. My understanding is that there is no provision for internet banking using a website. There's no backup method, yet 'Which?' and others have them as highly recommended.

You can get a new phone and regain access in minutes you know.

No internet banking via website is a good thing in my books - less vectors of attacks.

I have been using Starling as a main personal account for year and a half and starting to transition my business banking to them as well.

No fee and FreeAgent integration are the big selling points.

[ladymuck]

I echo the £85k sentiment, as it's something I worry about too when shifting money to a main account in lieu of it being sent onwards to savings accounts.

I need to move from HSBC due to their appalling treatment of contractors and robotic semi trained calls from their Indian call centres.

Starling are a mobile-only bank. I can't quite believe this, but if I lose my mobile phone I've lost access to the business bank account. My understanding is that there is no provision for internet banking using a website. There's no backup method, yet 'Which?' and others have them as highly recommended.

Would you highly recommend a bank that isn't even protected properly for DDOS via akamai/Cloudflare and is accessible from known ToR relays? I'm not impressed with their security or accessibility and therefore question their integrity for providing service when their app or my phone goes titsup.

Do you think that the bank will go under in those few moments when you're moving money about? Crikey how unstable is HSBC these days? Pretty sure you'd see a run on the bank first that would give you notice of impending doom.

[WordIsBond]

£85K is irrelevant for Tide because they aren't FSCS protected. If they go under you lose your money, whether more or less than £85K.

Starling is FSCS protected.

Starling has an annoying £25K daily limit. If you want to exceed it you have to give them the details of what payments you are making and they'll clear it. Not a big deal if it is a single payment, rather annoying if you are making payroll, pension payments, and dividends on the last day of the year and suddenly you have to give them details of 14 different payments. Other than that, very happy with them.

Starling does have an online banking website. It's rather limited but it is there so I think you'd be functional until you replace your phone.

[Amanensia]

Starling does have an online banking website. It's rather limited but it is there so I think you'd be functional until you replace your phone.

I'm pretty sure that's for business accounts only, and requires you to authenticate via your phone before you can log on, so it doesn't bypass the phone requirement.

Having said that I moved my business banking to Starling a few months ago when Cater Allen "upgraded" their online bank, leaving me with no access to the company bank account for two weeks and not a word of an apology, after almost 20 years as a loyal customer. I must say it's been very smooth indeed, including the speed of getting up and running, although that may be because I did have a (mostly dormant) Starling personal account too that I'd set up a year or two ago just to see what it was like.

I actually find myself using the personal account more now too - I just fund it as required from my "regular" personal account.

[rogerfederer]

You can get a new phone and regain access in minutes you know.

No internet banking via website is a good thing in my books - less vectors of attacks.

I have been using Starling as a main personal account for year and a half and starting to transition my business banking to them as well.

No fee and FreeAgent integration are the big selling points.

Acquiring a new smartphone with the same phone number isn't a 3 minute process, so the point remains. I can tell you don't work in the Security field, as the interface for the site via an app is essentially an API call via HTTPS from what I can see having spoken to them already regarding their interesting lacking DDOS security.

If I lose access to the HSBC app on my phone or I lose the two factor authentication keyfob then I can use one or t'other to access my account to make payments and view transactions. I can also phone their telephone banking or use the online help function to speak to a real person, albeit offshored.

Narrowing this to only an app via only a single device vastly reduces the backup plan when excrement hits the blades.