‘Abbey launching no-fee current account’
December 4, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Abbey has announced that it is launching a current account that will not charge any overdraft fees. This announcement came just days before Abbey and other banks went to court over a case that would decide whether they had to pay back millions in such fees to customers. In the end the court ruled in favour of the banks.
The Santander Zero Current Account will not charge any fees for bounced cheques, unpaid direct debits or overseas withdrawals. It also has low overdraft rates and will pay 6% interest on credit balances for the first year. The only catch is that it is only available for customers who have a mortgage with Abbey because the bank is trying to switch more of these customers over to its current account service.
The current account will be made available from January 11, 2010, and its launch is set to coincide with Abbey’s name change to Santander. Mortgage customers at Bradford & Bingley will also be able to open the account, and Alliance & Leicester mortgage customers will be eligible from summer 2010.
Together, the Santander group has a 13.5% share of the UK mortgage market with 2 million customers. But only 400,000 of these also hold a current account and it is hoping to change this.
The chief executive of Santander UK, Antonio Horta-Osorio, said that the group is “uniquely placed” to change the approach to current accounts. The head of banking at moneysupermarket.com, Kevin Mountford, said that the group had “taken heed of broad concerns” in the way that charges are applied to current accounts, and that this could lead to a change in the way banks operate in the future.
Find more details about the current account at the Abbey website here.
