Thursday, October 09, 2008

Savings safety

Guide to UK savings safety. There are probably similar resources for other countries.

'Q: Will my bank/building society go bust?
A. In the first incarnation of this guide, published in Sept 07, my answer was "extraordinarily, unthinkably, ridiculously unlikely", now I believe it is "unlikely".'

9 comments:

Alex said...

I'm with the Abbey, and they were bought by a Spanish bank a few years back. Looks like the same Spanish bank is trying to take over another British building society (Halifax?).

Meanwhile, stateside, my mortgage company has been/probably will be bought by my bank. Interesting eh.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I have my company savings in two different banks, RBS and BoS. It seems *both* of them will be nationalized today!

Alex said...

Back in the early 1990's it I heard the results of a survey which showed that the average Brit was more likely to change marital partners than bank. I was on my 5th bank by then...


So you have been with your banks since you lived in Scotland.

We did an interesting experiment in Stonehaven, mostly to show off to a Mexican colleague who was having enough trouble with English money.

One local co-worker was was a Clydesdale Bank customer, he went to the ATM and all his notes were Clydesdale Bank notes, I went to the RBS machine, and it issued RBS notes, the other local co-worker was a BoS customer, and he got nothing but BoS notes. I'd been to Scotland before, and was used to the multiple banknotes in circulation, but I didn't think they'd go so far as to only issue their own money in their ATMs.

Nationalization is the antithesis of Thatcherism.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

"So you have been with your banks since you lived in Scotland."

Only RBS. And even that would have been the first one I'd stumbled over here in town, just like it was in Edinburroh.

---
The notes in my wallet say Bank Of England. Can't say I've noticed other names there.

Alex said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banknotes_of_the_pound_sterling#Issuing_banks_and_authorities

There are many legal issuing mints in Britain. In England and Wales the English is the prevalent, though the Scottish are accepted as if legal tender.

For coinage, Manx and Channel Island money is freely traded, but is uncommonly found. Irish coinage from the Republic used to be frowned upon, it was typically used as its nearest UK equivalent, but really was not legal tender.

Wow, just read that Wikipedia page, and learnt a few things. I want one of those 100,000,000GBP notes, that would be way cool!

Alex said...

That bank note link linked

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

A *billion* pound note? Hard to believe.

In DK the equivalent of a £100 note is not uncommon. I was shocked to come here and find that the £50 note is so little used that the banks don't even have them in stock unless ordered. What's up with that.
(With the amounts I like to carry around, the twenties are just too bulky.)

Alex said...

No, the "Titan" was a 100 million, not a billion.

Is it true in the UK billion now means 10^9 (thousand million), not 10^12 (million million)?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Beats me, there are pretty few people I need to talk with about figures like that.