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Depends...
... on several things, including if you have more than £85,000 in there. Up to that amount is protected by the British Govenment deposit scheme.
If you are REALLY downbeat about the whole Euro thing and think that there may be a domino effect with Spain, Italy & others going down, then consider perhaps France and - in the theme of gotterdamerung - Germany. Where do you think we will end up?
Ah, well at least you have got your allotment, with the potatoes coming along nicely. Er,... you HAVE got an allotment, right?
Santander UK?
If the UK named Santander (trading as CO-Op bank and Alliance and Leicester) you are covered by the £85k gurantee - it is in fact safer than it's Spanish parent.
If the money is with the Spanish Santander then check on the FSA website where all the UK banking licence holders are listed. If it's not there I would start worrying......
I am with Santander
And not too worried, although I have paid my corporation tax early, so those nice(!) chaps at HMRC will give me interest too (at a better rate than Santander...)
Bank of Flash
I've got room under my mattress if anyone wants to invest with me!
Interest rates are fab - well, as in I take a great interest in how much I have stored there and pop upstairs regularly to gaze at it. And it's very secure - the dog tells me if a squirrel is on the fence so I think I'll get advance warning of thieves.
So ask your existing banks for wadges of £50s and send them to Flash Gordon, Quarterback - NY Jets, Saviour of the Universe, Earth. I promise I'll save every man, every woman, every child, every penny, every pound....
Oh and you only have 14 hours to save your money :)
At least with Santander
you should know, on a day to day basis, how much you've got with them.
For those of us with NatWest, these last few days, we've really no idea!
Talk about "helpful" banking.
This episode really does show the complete and utter reliance we have now, as a society, on information technology and, the downside of having no plan B.
Not strictly true Time for Change
Over the Jubilee bank holiday Santander apparently did not update their balances either for a few days so Nat West are not alone. One client paid his VAT twice as the payment did not show the first time so he assumed it had failed - not uncommon I gather - I was informed by HMRC when I rang to ask for a refund that they had a lot of such requests!!
and it is not all Nat West customers - my transactions seem to have worked fine so far thank goodness
Santander
I suspect you've got your money with Santander UK which is just as safe as Lloyds etc. as far as the deposit guarantee scheme is concerned. There is a school of thought that the Spanish parent company may seek to raid the UK bank's funds to prop themselves up but there is also the view that the UK company is sufficiently autonomous to resist them.
I don't recall what inconvenience Northern Rock's depositors had when HMG bailed them out but believe disruption was minimal.
I've certainly got a couple of thousand under the mattress (literally) in case of any disruption caused if my banks get found out by their customers who realise that their (audited) balance sheets are carrying toxic assets.
Probably about as risky or as safe as most of the others
Santander UK is supposed to be financially independent of its Spanish holding company, so even if Santander Spain goes under then it doesn't necessarily mean that Santander UK will.
Although I certainly wouldn't be keeping more than £85k in any UK bank at the moment.
No idea whether the £85k guarantee will be worth anything if the whole banking system collapses, though. But at least we still have our own currency so we can print a few hundred billion if we need to prop up our system.
£85,000 protection
I had deposited money with Icesave when that went belly up. I remember being pleasantly surprised at how quickly the compensation scheme settled - it was around 2 to 3 months, which was a lot quicker that I expected.