HSBC to introduce monthly fee for their Business Direct account

[SuperLooper]

My Santander account has always been free but then it is an old Abbey account.

I need a bank with half-decent overseas payment options, which is why I went with HSBC while keeping the Santander one open as a back-up. They were able to offer me a foreign currency account and the HSBCnet platform. Which is a bit of overkill, but with Santander they seem to offer very little - I want to be able to save details of overseas payments to re-use electronically.

Any recommendations? Do CA do this?

I'm in a very similar situation. Had a free Santander account for ages. Recently opened accounts with HSBC for foreign currency. Disappointed with HSBC's charges and poor exchange rate.

I'm now experimenting with Transferwise for foreign currency income and payments, and if that works nicely, I'll ditch HSBC and just stick with good old Santander.

(HSBC also makes you use that stupid little security keypad thing, every single time you want to log in or do anything. Drives me spare.)