Banking & Saving - List of banks by Institution - how to protect your money

A list of banks all offering compensation schemes to help you keep your money safe

All UK deposits are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), unless the banks country of origin offers a higher level of compensation than that offered by the UK scheme, in which case an FSCS membership is not permitted.

The FSCS is set up by financial bodies and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). This scheme guarantees that savers will get some of their money back in the event of a bank collapsing.

It is important to remember that many of the banks you may think are UK owned, are infact owned by other countries, and may run a separate compensation scheme with different levels of compensation, so you must check out the level of protection before investing large deposits with any bank. For example, ING Direct is owned by the Netherlands, which is covered by a scheme that offers protection on the first €100,000 on its accounts, while the Bank of Cyprus will only protect the first €20,000.

However, non-uk banks offering separate compensation schemes are generally backed by the UK's FSCS, so the remainder of the amount up to £50,000 (if applicable) would be covered.

This means that if the Bank of Cyprus were to fail, UK customers could claim from the Central Bank of Cyprus Deposit Protection Scheme for up to 90% of their deposit to a maximum of €20,000. The remainder of their deposit up to £50,000 could then be claimed from the UK's FSCS. Neither scheme is responsible for covering any shortfall in the other scheme.

Independent Banks:

The banks listed in the table below each count as individual institutions as far as compensation goes, therefore offering the full level of compensation provided by their scheme, so if your cash is spread across multiple bank accounts shown in the table, you can effectively protect all of your savings.

 

Alliance & Leicester	AK Bank	Allied Irish
Anglo Irish	Bank of Cyprus	Britannia BS
Buckinghamshire BS	Capital One	Cambridge BS
Cater Allen	Chelsea BS	Chesham BS
Citibank	Coutts	Coventry BS
Credit Unions (all separate)	Cumberland BS	Dunbar Bank
Dunfermline BS	Ecology BS	Egg
First Trust	Firstsave	Furness BS
Hanley BS	Harpenden BS	Hinkley and Rugby BS
ICICI	Investec	Ipswich BS
Julian Hodge Bank	Kent Reliance BS	Leeds BS
Leek BS	Liverpool Victoria	London Scottish Bank
Loughborough BS	Manchester BS	Mansfield BS
Market Harborough BS	Marsden BS	Melton Mowbray BS
Monmouthshire BS	Norwich & Peterborough BS	National Counties BS
Natwest	Newbury BS	Northern Bank
Nottingham BS	Principality BS	Progressive BS
Raphael Bank	Ruffler Bank	Saffron BS
Sainsburys	Scarborough BS (*)	Scottish BS
Scottish Widows	Skipton BS (*)	Standard Life
Stroud & Swindon BS	Teachers BS	Tesco Personal Finance (TPF)
Tridos	Ulster Bank	United Trust
West Bromwich	Whiteaway Laidlaw

Note (*)- The Skipton Building Society is in the process of taking over Scarborough BS - both marked (*) on the table. The completion date is not expected until February 2009, and until then they will retain separate FSA licences, providing £50,000 protection over each.

After this date it is expected that they will merge onto one licence providing savers with £50,000 protection across both, although this has not yet been confirmed.

- In Dec 2008, Nationwide, Cheshire BS and Derbyshire BS became one FSA registered institution.

On 31 Dec 2008, Yorkshire BS and Barnsley BS became one FSA registered institution.

You may also notice that some of the banks shown above do fall under the same institution, however, they have separate registrations so as far as protection is concerned the rules apply as if they were under different institutions.

Grouped Banks

The table below shows which banks/building societies fall under the same institution. The banks are also numbered 1-9 to aid colour blind readers. If you have multiple savings accounts that fall within the same colour/number, you will only be covered for up to the level of compensation offered for all accounts. You can still hold multiple accounts with different colours, the key is to mix them, spreading your money across several savings accounts.

BMW Savings - 1	Newcastle BS - 1	Cheltenham & Gloucester - 2
Lloyds TSB - 2	Clydesdale Bank - 3	Yorkshire Bank - 3
Direct Line - 4	Royal Bank of Scotland - 4	Virgin Money - 4
First Direct - 5	HSBC - 5	Barclays - 6
Woolwich - 6	Smile - 7	The Co-op - 7
AA - 8	Bank of Scotland - 8	Birmingham Midshires - 8
Halifax - 8	Intelligent Finance - 8	Saga - 8
Abbey - 9	Bradford & Bingley - 9	Asda - 9
Cahoot - 9	Bank of Ireland-10	Post Office-10
Kaupthing Edge - 11	ING Direct - 11	Heritable Bank - 11
Nationwide - 12	Cheshire BS - 12	Derbyshire BS - 12
Scarborough BS - 13	Skipton BS - 13
Yorkshire BS - 14	Barnsley BS - 14

HBOS and Lloyds

on 19 January 2009, Lloyds TSB Group plc was renamed as Lloyds Banking Group, after the acquisition of HBOS plc. The FSCS licences will remain the same, so are still treated as two are separate institutions, covering up to £50,000 across each.

However, you have to remember that the core parts of former HBOS (Halifax, Bank of Scotland, B'ham Midshires, Intelligent Finance, The AA and Saga) hold a single registration, so if you have multiple accounts across more than one of these providers, you will only be liable to receive £50,000 cover overall (£100,000 for joint accounts).

Abbey and A&L

The giant Spanish bank Santander's recently bought both Abbey and Alliance & Leicester. They tell us there are 'no plans to change' their FSA registrations, meaning they will remain separated in terms of institutions so you’re protected up to £50,000 in each.

Non-UK compensation schemes

Below is a list of the level of compensation offered by non UK banks. These schemes work in much the same way as the UK schemes, whereby savers are only protected per institution. For example, accounts held across Abbey, Asda and Bradford & Bingley would only provide £50,000 compensation between them as they all fall under the Santander group.

Bank Name	Level of compensation
Abbey	Covered by the UK's FSCS - £50,000
Alliance & Leicester	Covered by the UK's FSCS - £50,000
Asda	Covered by the UK's FSCS - £50,000
Bradford & Bingley	Covered by the UK's FSCS - £50,000
Citibank	Covered by the UK's FSCS - £50,000
Clydesdale Bank	Covered by the UK's FSCS - £50,000
Egg	Covered by the UK's FSCS - £50,000
Firstsave	Covered by the UK's FSCS - £50,000
ICICI	Covered by the UK's FSCS - £50,000
Yorkshire Bank	Covered by the UK's FSCS - £50,000
Akbank	€100,000 (Netherlands)
Anglo-Irish Bank	All deposits until September 2010 (Ireland)
Bank of Cyprus	€20,000 (Cyprus)
Bank of Ireland	All deposits until Sep 2010 (Ireland)
ING Direct	€100,000 (Netherlands)
Kaupthing Edge Now part of ING Direct	€100,000 (Netherlands)
Post Office	All deposits until Sep 2010 (Ireland)
Triodos Bank	€100,000 (Netherlands)

Disclaimer: This information was updated on 12th January 2009. At Which4u we do our best to keep up with market changes, however the sheer pace of change of ownership of banks in the last 3 months means that our information in some cases may be slightly out of date. We therefore do not take any responsibility for this information being incorrect, but will continue to monitor the situation daily to make that this is avoided where possible.

Written by Sam Gooch