How safe are my savings in the bank?

September 22, 2008 – 7:57 pm

With all the current turmoil in the banking industry and because I bank with HBOS I have been reading up on the rights I have if my bank does collapse.

At the moment if a bank goes bust a scheme setup by the government (financial services compensation scheme) will compensate you up to a maximum of ￡35,000 which is great news for most of us but what I didn’t realize is this is not per account it’s per banking institution.

What this means is if you had ￡50,000 in savings and have it spread across HBOS, and Intelligent Finance or the AA the government scheme will only compensate you up till ￡35,000 since these 3 banks operate under the same bank registration.

Whilst I don’t have to worry about this - many people with retirement savings do so it is certainly something worth checking. Use the following site to double check what banks are conected. http://howsafeisyourmoney.co.uk/quickcheck/