🔔 Any action is better than no action

Savers languishing on low rates need to act now, as the rate war among providers heats up.

However, if you have a lot of money on deposit, it can be an arduous task working out how to move that money not only to the best-paying providers, but also to keep it covered under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

Under the scheme, the first £85,000 of savings with an institution are covered, should the worst happen and the bank or building society goes bust.

When it comes to institutions though, it is important to understand what the FSCS means. For example, if you have savings with Bank of Scotland, Halifax and BM Savings, you would only be able to have £85,000 across all of those banks because they are all covered by the Bank of Scotland Banking Licence. It is not always obvious, so it is important to check.

If you prefer someone else to do the hard work for you though, Octopus Investments has created a new Octopus Cash offering, which helps you to get the spread of cash you need to keep it protected under the FSCS, by splitting an allocation between three separate providers, which you access through just one account with Octopus.

Find out more about Octopus Cash >>

This means you can put up to £255,000 with three providers and all of it will be protected up to the £85,000 FSCS limit, providing you do not have any other savings with the institutions Octopus uses.

These are:

• OakNorth Bank
• Cambridge & Counties Bank
• Close Brothers

The benefit of using the Octopus offering is that you would only have to fill in one form to access the three accounts.

However, while you will be getting a better rate than the average on the high street, the downside is that you might not be getting the best possible rate available, because of the rates directly agreed with the banks involved.

In fact, the total amount of interest estimated on £255,000 is £3,162, which gives a gross rate of 1.24%.

If you want to get the best deal on the market, you may want to consider using the Savings Champion Concierge service.

Putting £85,000 into each of Paragon Bank, Atom Bank and OakNorth Bank which are paying 1.85%, 1.8% and 1.71% respectively, means you would increase your interest payment on the £255,000 to £4,556.00, which is 1.78% gross before charges.

The charge for the Concierge service would be 0.15%, which means a net interest rate of 1.55% gross.

At present, you would have to fill in three forms for the higher rate, (the Concierge Team will fill in as many details as possible for you) but with the additional amount you would receive, it would work out at around an extra £400 per year per form.

For about 15 minutes work, many people may feel this extra return is worth taking the time for.

For more details on either the Octopus Cash offer or our Concierge Cash service, please call 0800 321 3581.