Anyone Know Of A Solid / Not Mega-sized Uk Bank

[megabear]

I've been searching and searching for a mid-sized, solid UK bank that I can trust a little savings to. Some of the big banks like HSBC have me a little nervous (particularly with their recent take over of House Hold Financial)..what are they thinking? Anyway, here in the US I use Weiss Reports for bank ratings; but in the UK I cannot find a similar service that let's you buy finanical information one bank at a time. The big finanical rating agencies like Fitch want you to subscribe to their entire package, which is cost prohibitive when you are just searching for one bank.

 

Any ideas would be most appreciated.

[LostItAll]

HSBC's purchase of Household Financial surprised me because I thought HSBC were considered to be one of the more canny banks. I wonder if they were paid to to buy Household Financial.

 

Anyway, I think they are a much bigger bank that just the UK - I think they have a lot of interests in Asia and may be more diversified than other UK banks. But increasingly I wonder what the hell all of these companies have been doing behind our backs.

 

Avoid Abbey National. Abbey has a fondness for junk bonds.

 

Have you considered using a building society? There are lots of building societies - "savings and loans" in US-speak -that will offer you a savings account and which don't have exotic financial wierdness going on.

 

It's hard to recommend one over the other. You can get some names from the list of some of them (it includes banks) at:

http://www.kimberconsulting.com/repocgi/vo...dlender2.pl.cgi

 

The chart gives you an idea how their mortgage customers rate them. The ones with local sounding names - Norwich and Peter borough - are thre not so big ones. I think most of them offer checking accounts that let draw on savings.

 

May help, may not.

[megabear]

Thank you, I am immensely grateful. Now I have a place to start looking.

[Guest sigmoidoscope]

I have accounts at both HSBC and Coots in the UK.

 

HSBC bought up Midland Bank, where I had a clearing account.

 

They do a fine job as near as I can tell.

 

Coots has a large minimum deposit and is nice to use if you are over there.

[Goldmember]

Royal Bank of Scotland. They don't play the derivatives game, at least not nearly to the degree of other banks.

[catapuss]

Unfortunately i don't know anything about credit ratings info, but as a matter of interest, is HSBC not a Chinese bank? I always assumed it was. This has been a source of amusement to me, as it has long been stated here that the UK has some sort of superiority in financial services, whereas the manufacturing should be left to the Chinese.

[megabear]

Thanks for all your replies. I too had an account at Midland when HSBC took them over. From what I've read, HSBC is origianlly a Chinese bank. Although, I think it originated in Hong Kong when the Brits leased that little island. They also have locations on the mainland too. It bothers me that these humongous banks have so much crappola going on that you can't tell what kind of financial shape they are in. I didn't like the looks of HSBC "before" they bought House Hold Financial, and I can't imagine why a bank would want to take on the largest consumer credit company in the US when everyone knows the US consumer is in deep dodo.

 

I'm going to look at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

 

Thanks again stoolies

[milt]

HSBC does have the reputation of being an extremely well run organisation,and they will be hoping that their purchase of HI is similar to what they did with the Midland,which not that long ago was the UK's biggest bank,but had fallen on hard times.However in my view their shares trade at an unjustified premium to the rest of the banking sector.

In general,most UK banks are riskier than the building societies(except the likes of Northern Rock,which concentrates on residential mortgages)and I don't go near them.

Anyone considering putting cash into accounts with any "authorised" financial institution in the UK should make sure it's covered by the FSA deposit insurance scheme(I think similar to the US FDIC),which guarantees 90% of your cash but only up to GBP 35000,in the event of bankruptcy.The limit applies to each bank/building society so it's a good idea to have it spread around.

This will become more of an issue in the coming Kondratieff winter .

[catapuss]

Not what u r looking for but might b useful