[matthew_w100]

Santander, of course, charge £60 for their current account, but if you use it actively for paying bills etc you get more than that back. I've struggled to understand the business model here - they give you money for paying money OUT of your account? I don't know what they are trying to do, but I'm sure I'm being rooked.

[cockney steve]

^^^^^^^ Probably on the basis that you have to deposit it, in order to pay it out, therefore they get to lose it in the system for several days.....free borrowing for them to put on overnight deposit..
Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask.

[kanga]

The Scottish founding members of the "Trustee Savings Bank" .. would turn in their graves ....

The only banking shares I own (almost the only shares) are the result of demutualisations of Building Societies and of TSB, with which I had accounts. In the case of the BSs I was given the chance to vote on the proposal, and always opposed it, but was outvoted by carpetbaggers; but in the case of TSB, IIRC, the demutualisation was by central (London, despite most TSBs being Scots-based) legislation/regulation/fiat. Soon my TSB shares became Lloyds-TSB.

I kept my shares in all because they gave me a chance to vote at AGM (almost) always to oppose (re)election of Directors* and (now) Directors' remuneration, and generally anything the Board has proposed I've always reinvested my dividends, so the size of my vote tranche has gradually increased, but not enough other shareholders have yet agreed with m .

[*with exception that if a proposed new Director is female, I will research her CV to see if there's something both unusual and meritorious, and may then vote for her. I subscribe to the irrational theory that Lehman Sisters would not have overreached itself ]

Anyway, I was a bit miffed that shareholders who had been TSB ones at the time of demutualisation were not automatically given shares in the new 'hived off' TSB. It remains to be seen, of course, if their ethos will be as different as their TV ads suggest: I have not yet opened any account with them.

Currently using Co-op and Nationwide, and have had excellent service from both. Closest branches of both seem to have healthy footfall.