Cater Allen vs HSBC/Santander Business banking

[jamesbrown]

I've had a Santander/Abbey business account since 2007 and for several years ALL my work was with overseas clients, and I hired up to 5 sub contractors at a time (probably 10 in total). I never had such problems as you describe... maybe CA have different back-end systems though.

90%+ of contractors ARE only in need of extremely simple banking, that's the whole point. One payment in a month, a handful of SO/DD for accountancy and so on, and the odd dividend or transfer to business savings account. In business banking terms, contractors only need "my first bank account"

They may have different systems but, fundamentally, Cater Allen is a small player with very basic online services. They are not a clearing bank, unlike HSBC. Cater Allen use RBoS for clearing, via other intermediaries overseas. Overseas payments (particularly non-EU) require an essay of instructions. When you have multiple intermediaries in a chain, things can and generally do go wrong. These problems are not always caused by Cater Allen directly, but they are a structural symptom.

Likewise, almost all of my business comes from overseas and I am speaking from direct experience (of Cater Allen, not their parent, Santander). So, there are degrees of simplicity and, while I agree that contractors are definitely at one end of that spectrum, banks like Cater Allen are pretty inflexible to deviations from the norm.

[matzie]

Cater Allen don't support Faster Payments, at least not properly. Set up a payment online before 3pm (or maybe 4?) and the next day at somewhere between 1pm and 2pm it will go into the target account as a Faster Payment. I find that quite annoying but no other complaints with CA.