Britannia rules at Bristol & West

By TONY HAZELL FOR THE DAILY MAIL
Updated: 00:00 EST, 7 April 2006

MORE than 800,000 Bristol & West savers will see their accounts fully merged into Britannia from the beginning of July.

Britannia took over the savings business of Bristol & West last year but has been embroiled in complicated systems problems.

These include sorting through 1,700 different versions of Bristol & West accounts to make certain that no savers would be worse off following the takeover.

One benefit of the changes is that, from July 3, Bristol & West savers will be able to use the 187 Britannia branches. Britannia savers will be able to use the 97 Bristol & West branches in 65 new locations. Branches will be merged if there are two within a mile of each other, but other than this there will be no closures.

Britannia has pledged that no saver will be worse off and is spending £7.5m a year in improving interest rates.

Where possible Bristol & West savers are being shifted into Britannia accounts. These include the cash mini Isa where in February the rate was raised from 4% to between 4.45 and 4.55% tax-free depending on how much is in the account.

Other simple moves will see those in Direct Saver, Call One and the internet account Save transferred into Britannia DirectSaver, a Money Mail bestbuy postal and phone-based account paying 3.6% after savings tax (4.5% before tax).

Children with the Money Monsters Children Bond, paying 4%, will be moved to First Saver. This is a much better account, paying 4.5%. It also gives a cash card to those over 12 and lets young adults remain in the account until they are 23.

One of the biggest headaches has been the Select account where 194,000 are paid a derisory 0.08% (0.1%) interest. Most of these will be moved into Britannia's Flexible Savings paying at least ten times more interest at 0.8 % (1 %) on £1 rising to 1.48 % (1.85 %) on £100,000-plus.

However, some versions of the Select accounts have a cheque book and some allow payments to be made by direct debit, which Flexible Savings does not allow. About 11,000 people use these facilities, so Britannia is now trying to set up meetings with them to sort out alternatives.

This might mean helping them to move the direct debits to their bank's current account or possibly helping them to open a current account elsewhere. Under an agreement with B&W's former owner, Bank of Ireland, which still administers these banking operations, no direct debit will be bounced.

So even if account holders ignore Britannia's attempts to contact them, their accounts should continue to operate without problems for the immediate future. Those in the Access, Postal Saver and the High Interest Cheque Account will also be moved to the branch-based Flexible Savings, which provides instant access with a passbook.

There are a large number of accounts that do not directly match anything offered by Britannia. In many cases this is because the terms and conditions are so different. For instance Bristol & West has several accounts which demand savers give notice to get at their money.

Britannia does not operate these old-fashioned notice accounts. All these old-style accounts plus a few others have been closed to new business but existing savers can continue to use them.

However, Graham Leftwich, head of corporate communications, says: 'We are pledging to keep the interest rates on these accounts competitive.'

JOHN TURVILL, 47, pictured with his wife Julie, and daughter Chloe, 14, has recently benefited from Britannia taking over Bristol & West. His cash mini Isa rate has been increased from the 4% paid by Bristol & West to 4.5% on £3,000, rising to 4.55% on £9,000.

Mr Turvill, a butcher and manager from Harlow, Essex, says:'Britannia has retained the staff in my local B&W branch and the service is still good. I like the fact that I am also earning more money on my long-term savings.'

Chloe is also set to benefit. She had a children's account with Bristol & West and can look forward to earning 4.5%, up from 4%.