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Business bank accounts - who do you like?


Judge

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I have a limited company and have been with Co-op Bank for years, via the FSB. There was lots to like about this bank .

 

  • Free banking (with FSB subscription)
  • UK based branches and call centres
  • Friendly staff
  • Ethical use of funds
  • owned by the co-operative society

The case against them was that the online banking was just rubbish - the website clunky and slow and no mobile app at all (they have one for personal accounts though)

 

Now they are on their last legs. we already saw the consequences of their disastrous Britannia Building Society purchase. They will never recover from this. Then the situation with Paul Flowers further lost status points.

 

They sold the majority of their shares to US hedge fund companies and are now looking to sell the bank completely.

 

 

And so they have put themselves up for sale. I am no financial guru but I see no hope for them All the major banks had a look and walked away. The only possible investors left are a Qatari company and another US hedge fund. Well really, who would want them? Rocked by scandal, incompetence, deeply in debt with a creaky IT infrastructure.

 

So I am bailing. Already switched personal account (back) to Nationwide.

 

But where to put business? I would like to stay ethical, but Only Triodos offer such an account and it comes with no debit card so thats not much use. Then we have to assume that ALL big money is possibly dirty money and just suck it up and go mainstream.

 

 

The big guys - I hate lloyds, seen them stitch too many people up, including me. Sames goes for Barclays. I would like to avoid all the banks that went bust and had to be bailed out. That seems to leave Santander or HSBC. Unless I go off piste with somebody like Danske Bank or Clydsdale.

 

I do not need branches and would be happy to have an Intarweb only account. I dont have a massive turnover and just want something that is modern and makes good use of technology and does not charge the earth.

 

Not asking much eh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I'm in the same situation with a coop business account so I will be interested to follow this one.

I have a personal account with Santander and it's been good, their online systems are much better than coop.

Had some awful experiences with HSBC's offshore call centre, I wouldn't go with them again.

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I recently had the Co-Op completely mess up my credit report, showing I had unpaid overdue debts with them when I had none. Took far too much legal wrangling to get them to fix it, even besides this personal quibble their customer service has gotten significantly worse over the years.

 

I've heard mostly good things from people I know that bank with Santander, I'm personally with Lloyds at the moment and thus far they've been pretty good but I know others have had problems. HSBC I've heard a lot of horror stories about, but that could just be my personal circle of course.

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I was with Santander for biz account before I became limited and it was okay, except that trying to communicate with them was hard. I really dont want offshore call centres.

I just got off the phone to Unity Trust Bank, who are a small ethically driven bank and they used to own part of co-op but pulled out a few years back.

They sound good but very basic. No debit card (but do offer a credit card type thing via Lloyds that pays off in full each month)

No mobile app either - just transactions via website. And they do not use one of those little keypad things either - which is a plus so you dont have to have the stupid thing with you if go go away.

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I was with Santander for biz account before I became limited and it was okay, except that trying to communicate with them was hard. I really dont want offshore call centres.

 

Whenever I've called Santander (only been with them for the last 2 years) I have been swiftly answered by a UK call centre who weren't just robots reading from a script and could actually help.

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Thats good to know Tim. Here is another contender - I was just talking to Metro Bank and they sound interesting. Although London based they said that although you have to visit a store to open an account after that you are very well served by the online and mobile apps. As they have been designed from the ground up and learned from mistakes made by the other traditional big banks they sound like a good prospect.

 

The account also links to Xero accountng software - not that I use it, but its a bonus if you do, automatic reconciliation on your account. That would be handy for sure.

Fees are £5pm plus transaction fee of 30p per item.

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We have used Santander for a couple of years. (After a disastrous experience with Bank of Scotland).

 

The online side is pretty good, mobile app is useable albeit a little cumbersome in places.

 

Biggest bugbear is that the bank don't allow business customers to use the counters in branches. The only option for paying in cheques is via the ATMs. They scan the cheques, and whilst you can scan multiple cheques in one pass, you only get one grand total appearing on the statement, which drives our accountants mad. So we have to go through the entire process for every cheque we deposit. It's not unusual to be standing at the machine for 5-10 minutes whilst an angry queue forms behind.

 

The other drawback is that only the person with the ATM card can make deposits, you can't just get someone to throw a cheque in if they're going to be passing a branch.

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The account also links to Xero accountng software - not that I use it, but its a bonus if you do, automatic reconciliation on your account. That would be handy for sure.

 

Xero links to our Santander account without problems. I gather that most major banks can do it, but kudos to Metro Bank for making a feature of it. It's a major time-saver and more businesses should be aware of it.

 

Fees are £5pm plus transaction fee of 30p per item.

 

Santander is a flat £7.50pm with no transaction fees so I guess it comes down to what sort of volume you are likely to be doing.

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I use Handelsbanken for my business banking.

 

The website is good if a little dated, the mobile app is nice though.

 

When you call them you speak to a real person in your local branch, who can sort most things out themselves.

 

If you need counter services, to pay in cheques etc you can use any HSBC branch.

 

 

 

 

For my personal account I've switched to Starling. It's built from the ground up around the mobile app and is serving me very well so far.

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yeah, Starling looks really good. In fact I wish I had found out about that before migrating to Nationwide but thats okay.

I have heard good things about Handelsbanken, although their website is a bit cagey about what is on offer.

What are their rates?

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Handelsbanken are probably more expensive than the majority of high street banks.

 

But I save so much time in dealing with them quickly and not being put on hold for hours. For me it more than covers the additional cost.

 

They're also very flexible and can make decisions in branch, rather than just typing your details into a computer and seeing if it says yes or no.

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Santander or HSBC - I really don't know which of those I'd say is the worst for customer service, but I've experienced both and they're dreadful. Choosing between one of those would be like trying to decide whether to have Gary Glitter or Jimmy Savile babysit your kids.

 

I guess it all depends on personal experiences, though, which as we know vary wildly. You say that you were disappointed with Lloyds, whereas the small amount of interaction that I've had with them has been positive (due mainly to one particularly excellent member of staff in my local branch).

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One thing I LIKE about HSBC is that the branch at Lakeside is properly open to help in person til 8PM. It's a 30 min drive but sorting things out at my time -early evening tween ft job and casual work suits me.

 

See whether there is a late hours branch of a bank near you, not necessarily HSBC.

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Local branch??? I live in a place with a population of 10000, no empty retail space, a reletively affluent area where the last bank - Nat West - has just closed its doors. They really just aren't that interested any more.
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