Santander Extends Eligibility on UK's First Fee-Free Current Account

BRADFORD, England, March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Santander is extending the eligibility on the UK's first fee-free current bank account.   From 8 March 2010, the Santander Zero Current Account will be available to customers who hold a Santander investment product or open one, in addition to the current eligibility of mortgage customers. 

Santander has now made the revolutionary new current account available to almost six out of ten of those who hold a current account(1) in the UK.   With 40 million adults in the UK with at least one current account – the Santander Zero Current Account is now available to over 22 million consumers.

By extending the eligibility to include the bank's investment customers, there are now 2.5 million customers who already have a mortgage or investment product with Santander, but hold their current account with another bank, who could switch immediately to take advantage of the Zero Current Account.

Vim Maru, Director of Retail Products, Santander UK, said:

"Millions of customers could switch tomorrow.  I encourage every one of them to visit a Santander branch, visit us online or call us, to discuss how they can take advantage of our free switching service and start to save money on their banking by moving to the Santander Zero Current Account."

Vim Maru, continues: 

"When we launched the Zero Current Account we said that Santander was uniquely placed amongst UK banks to change the way it does business.   Extending the eligibility to allow many more people access to fee-free banking is another example of our new approach; one based on simplicity: the more business you do with us, the more we will offer you in return."

Santander's UK strategy has been built on three pillars – improving efficiency at a faster and to a greater extent than its UK peers; using this competitive cost advantage to give customers better value-for-money products; which in turn drives more customer business to the bank.  This successful strategy has enabled Santander to outperform its UK retail competitors for the last two years and it is now the UK's most efficient bank. This efficiency is now allowing Santander to reward loyal customers with better deals.

The information contained in our press releases is intended solely for journalists and should not be used by consumers to make financial decisions.

Notes to Editors

1)There are 15 million mortgage customers in the UK. There are 8 million investment customers in the UK.   Approx 0.5 million hold both.  This means 22.5 million (56%) out of 40 million current account customers could now qualify.

The Santander Zero Current Account is available to customers who hold their main current account with us or switch their main current account.

The Santander Zero Current Account is not available to those in arrears on their mortgage.   We will review the account eligibility criteria on a regular basis and if the customer no longer meets the criteria, we will notify the customer and transfer the account to our Preferred In-Credit Rate account.

About Us

Banco Santander (SAN.MC, STD.N, BNC.LN) is a retail and commercial bank, based in Spain, with presence in 10 main markets.

In the UK, Santander operates two retail businesses – Santander, which was formed out of the Abbey and Bradford & Bingley retail network, and Alliance & Leicester. Together they have over 1300 branches, around 4,500 cash machines and they provide a full range of bank accounts, corporate banking and loans services to 25 million customers.

Alliance & Leicester will become known as Santander by the end of 2010. 

http://www.santander.co.uk

SOURCE Santander UK