first direct

Oh my gosh.

How did that come about? Did you do a video first and for First Direct and then? Tell us about that.

So yeah, we've been collaborating with First Direct on a couple of videos, and then the [laughs] Pussycat Dolls publicist seen that video.

Obviously, all the dolls have obviously-

Obviously

I mean, lots of the bank, the banks that offer switchers offers on their switchers account, they tend to offer good service 'cause they're really trying hard.

You know, right now you've got Nationwide, you've got First Direct, they're paying.

Barclays is paying three hundred quid.

HSBC is paying two hundred and twenty pounds.

That's giving you two hundred and twenty pounds for free if you join it, you're new there.

Then my top all-rounder pick, First Direct.

It's giving you two hundred and ten pounds for free at the moment if you switch to it.

It's also number one-rated for service in all the polls I do, over ninety percent rate it great.

So you can see that we have a plethora, a, a huge pot of different bank accounts willing to pay you at the moment.

And one of the things to remember at the moment is, of course, Christmas is coming.

So if you switch right now, just to run through the dates that you would get it, Barclays, uh, if you did everything as quickly as you need to do, and you've got to check the eligibility, you could have that by the twenty-seventh of November, HSBC by the seventeenth of December, First Direct by the twenty-second of November, Club Lloyds by the twenty-ninth of October.

You could have all that free cash in time for Christmas.

If you were to deposit £500 each month into that building society, you could earn at the end of the year around £163 in interest.

First Direct have a 7% fixed regular saver, which I think is quite interesting and important to know, particularly in an environment where base rates, interest rates are quite volatile.

It's possible the Bank of England may hike the rate.

So fixing might not necessarily be the best thing, but I think that's worth noting.

This is nice.

You can withdraw the money however you like.

With First Direct, if you want to get the money out, you can, but you have to close the account.

Chase UK are letting you withdraw freely.

And we actually, we found that four lenders this year, really, they hit that sweet spot of excellent customer satisfaction, but also consistently offering the top deals.

Uh, so they were Barclays, First Direct, Nationwide Building Society, and NatWest, who are all our Which recommended providers for mortgages this year.

Along with Nationwide as, as a building society, uh, both Principality and Skipton Building Societies, I was having a look at all the, the list of all, all the results a bit earlier on.

They round out the top three spots for customer satisfaction.

But maybe more importantly is the good deal as well, to make sure you're actually paying a, a reasonable and an affordable repayment every month.

Yeah, definitely.

So, so First Direct, they weren't top of our table, but they were the cheapest lender on average in our analysis.

And we also see that Barclays were the, were the joint second cheapest lender, um, with Lloyds Bank and HSBC.

I mean, I'm not close enough to the sector to know the ins and outs, but I guess...

If you look at it compared to high street banking, where brands like First Direct and brands like Monzo have, whether it's through customer service or whether it's through tech or taking a different approach, very stagnant industry has attracted disruptor brands to come in and go, actually, you know what? We can do this differently.

I wonder if that insurance market is crying out for that disruptor to come in and be like, you know what? We're just going to tackle this differently.

Maybe they're out there and we're not working.