Reply to: Switching bank accounts

[BigRed]

Jesus wept. How on earth do some of you run your companies!?

From an iphone app of course

[SueEllen]

It actually arrives after close of business on the next business day. So in my example a transfer made on Friday evening will take until Tuesday evening to arrive which is four whole days. What business days have to do with anything when it's all done electronically now I can't imagine other than the bank holding onto your money as an interest free loan for an extra couple of days.

I bank with Cater Allen and the money arrives in the middle of the day. This is with all 3 of the banks I have personal accounts with. I actually phoned CA up to ask them as I thought it arrived in the morning, and they stated the funds should arrive in the middle of the day.

So if you have an issue with the money arriving later the fault isn't Cater Allen's but your personal bank's.

CA don't have their own payment processing services they use RBS's. (Hence the RBS sort code.)This means they bulk transfer payments which is why there is a delay. The other financial institutions who do this are the smaller building societies who offer current accounts. There is an advantage to this as if there is a suspect transaction you or they can stop it, and as CA is targeted at high net-worth individuals it's in their interest to have some delay.

[nigelbb]

It should actually arrive on Tuesday which indicates part of the delay is due to who your personal bank account is. The regulations state it should arrive the next business day.

It actually arrives after close of business on the next business day. So in my example a transfer made on Friday evening will take until Tuesday evening to arrive which is four whole days. What business days have to do with anything when it's all done electronically now I can't imagine other than the bank holding onto your money as an interest free loan for an extra couple of days.

[SueEllen]

It's Saturday morning & I would like to transfer some money from my Cater Allen business account to my private account & from past experience it won't arrive until next Wednesday. It could be worse it could be Friday evening & I would have to wait nearly five days.

It should actually arrive on Tuesday which indicates part of the delay is due to who your personal bank account is. The regulations state it should arrive the next business day.

This means you need to move BOTH your business bank account and personal account to different banks.

There is no point changing to HSBC or whoever for your business banking if your personal bank delays receiving incoming FP payments. As if you make a FP on a Tuesday evening from your business account it won't land in your personal account until Wednesday morning.

BTW I had that before when I was with HSBC - one of my personal accounts took an extra day to receive the payments due to the incoming bank's cr*p system.

[darrylmg]

Santander is only when your company is new as well - i.e. a startup. Seems it's £7.50 for anyone already in the game.

So the question should be - what's the best bank for people who are no longer starting up that is free/cheap, good technology, instant transfers etc?

HSBC is £5.50 a month.
I can go into countless branches.
Hardly breaks the bank, good online banking, good App and has a feed into Xero Accounts.

[PerfectStorm]

Santander do free banking for a year, but it's £7.50 per month after that. Transfers (to HSBC) are instant - no issues in over two years.

Santander is only when your company is new as well - i.e. a startup. Seems it's £7.50 for anyone already in the game.

So the question should be - what's the best bank for people who are no longer starting up that is free/cheap, good technology, instant transfers etc?

[PerfectStorm]

It's Saturday morning & I would like to transfer some money from my Cater Allen business account to my private account & from past experience it won't arrive until next Wednesday. It could be worse it could be Friday evening & I would have to wait nearly five days.

Absolutely no way I would take an account with them under those conditions.

As for banks that don't do instant faster transfers - Aldermore seems to take about 30 minutes in either direction. Natwest is instant.

[nigelbb]

You're correct to say CA don't do faster payments.
You're incorrect to say that CA take 2 days to make payments. It's next day, if you do it online before 3pm, or before 4.30 on the phone (you may need to confirm exact times).

It's Saturday morning & I would like to transfer some money from my Cater Allen business account to my private account & from past experience it won't arrive until next Wednesday. It could be worse it could be Friday evening & I would have to wait nearly five days.

[MrWebDev]

How could businessman be so stupid as not to seek advice when it's available? Thank goodness there are some people on this forum who are prepared to share rather than just being snotty.

Thankyou Nigelbb!

I'm currently in the process of transferring to HSBC, I'll let post on here to let you know how it all goes.

For those that are interested, it seems that business bank accounts are also part of the whole 7-day switching agreement, which was one of the things I wasn't sure of at first, I've used this to switch personal accounts in the past with no fuss at all.

For those taking the time out of their day to question my business acumen, as I've mentioned I've done this with my personal account, but never a business one. I wanted to find out if I was about to enter a whole world of pain unawares, and thought that maybe asking the question on a forum with business people who operate and run a similar operation to myself on I would find some reasonable and maybe useful advice.

[LucidDementia]

How could businessman be so stupid as not to seek advice when it's available? Thank goodness there are some people on this forum who are prepared to share rather than just being snotty.

I'll give anyone advice with pleasure. My advice to anyone who can't figure business banking out for themselves: you're NCOTBAC.

[Mr.Whippy]

To actually answer the original question of how painful the process is.....

I switched from Cater Allen to HSBC a couple of years back, mostly for faster payments/instant transfers & mobile app banking etc.

The process was completely pain free, I made an appointment and went into the branch and met with a business specialist and we went through the process of opening the account & getting the two factor device setup. They then dealt with Cater Allen to get the existing funds & direct direct debits transferred to my new account. Everything transferred over smoothly without any issues at all.

Well worth 30 minutes of my time in branch to be honest. They even made me a coffee & gave me some biscuits

[nigelbb]

Jesus wept. How on earth do some of you run your companies!?

I hear you. No wonder HMRC are all over us.
How can anyone pretend to be a businessman but not be able to handle something as basic as banking without assistance?

How could businessman be so stupid as not to seek advice when it's available? Thank goodness there are some people on this forum who are prepared to share rather than just being snotty.

[SueEllen]

What's the harm in keeping personal and business accounts with the same bank?

There are lots of reasons you don't want to.

The most important one in the past 2 years is the fact that nearly all banks systems have gone down and some have taken a week to come back up.

If you can't manage your money without a phone app you would have been in extreme s*** if you couldn't access your personal and business accounts for that time.

[meridian]

Switching bank accounts

Same with transfers to the Halifax. I've been very happy with Santander so no intention of moving at present despite the charge.

They pay a decent interest rate that more than offsets the charges anyway :-)

[northernladuk]

What's the harm in keeping personal and business accounts with the same bank?

Question is where are the benefits as the two are in no way related?