Business Savings Account

[youngguy]

I've got HSBC and Aldermore accounts and now need another for the £85k FCSC protection.

What are people using nowadays?

I was going to go with Metro but I think you have to go into a bank to show documents etc, which I'd like to avoid if possible.

Nationwide don't appear to have an online facility at all!

I recall seeing reports in here that Cater Allen is not what it used to be as well.

[jamesbrown]

Investec.

[Maslins]

We were recently introduced to this which I thought looked useful for situations like the OP describes:
https://gemstonelegal.akonihub.com/home
Disclosure - neither I nor any business/person I'm connected to get any financial benefit if you use the above link. I believe it is however an affiliate link, and the finance broker who told me about it gets a small kickback from any accounts signed up via that link.

It can serve a few potentially useful purposes:
1) in a "compare the market" type way, you should be able to easily to see what interest rates you can get from a wide variety of providers. For clarity it is just bog standard savings accounts not whacky/dodgy investment schemes. Hence they're all very low risk, but equally modest "savings account" style returns.
2) you enter all your data once, on one system, then can easily have funds the various different underlying providers. You don't have to re-key lots of details to open accounts with multiple different providers. Handy for if/when you want to move your funds from a lower interest to higher interest option, also if you want funds spread across multilple providers for FSCS purposes.
3) you can see all your funds potentially spread across multiple different providers in one place.

[Snooky]

MyCo has Aldermore and Saffron Building Society, had them both for years because at the time they offered reasonable interest rates and I opened them for the same reason, FSCS cover. Now I just use them for the latter.

You may already know this, but the £85k cover only applies per financial institution so if you put your money in an account with First Direct, for example, which is the same financial institution as HSBC, you only get £85k cover for the two accounts combined. So choose a provider which isn't linked to an account you already have.

There's a good tool here to look up which banks are linked: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/sa...gs/#whatcounts

[youngguy]

There's a good tool here to look up which banks are linked: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/sa...gs/#whatcounts

Great tool, thanks!

[adubya]

https://www.shawbrook.co.uk/direct/s...cess-accounts/

Easy to apply and manage.

[PerfectStorm]

Shawbrook and Aldermore for that sweet sweet 0.5%

warning - Shawbrook makes Aldermore look fast. Their transfers out are minimum £500 and happen next working day.

Keep a few thousand in your current account for emergencies

[jamesbrown]

You can get a mind-blowing 0.75% with Investec, albeit on 32 days notice

[jamesbrown]

You can also get 0.8% with Redwood Bank on 35 days notice. Other than that, it's all a muchness. Several accounts pay 0.3-0.5% for easy access. I still have some hangover notice accounts that pay much better and, for some reason, a couple of easy access ones too, which is weird, but I'm not complaining

[Andy Hallett]

Investec.

Is there a FreeAgent Bank feed?