Hi FlatBroke,

Banks tend to have criteria applicable to the various types of accounts they offer. Generally speaking they will only offer their most basic account to someone who is in a trust deed.

The risk is that, if these banks monitor personal insolvency data, your accounts could be frozen and/or closed without notice after your trust deed starts. This could obviously be extremely disruptive. The likelihood of this will be higher if you have an account with an overdraft facility, and might be higher for a business account also.

Equally, they might not notice and there might be no disruption.

Is the business account for you as a sole trader, or is it connected to a limited company you run?

I'm afraid I don't know whether the newer banks (like Starling) offer basic accounts to people who enter insolvency processes or whether they monitor insolvency data.

By keeping a joint bank account with your wife you'll keep a "link" between you on your credit reports. This will have no direct impact on your wife's credit score, but it could make some lenders less willing to lend to her. If you don't have any shared financial accounts reporting to the credit reference agencies, this link will not exist.

There's some more information on this subject at:

https://www.trust-deed.co.uk/bank-accounts.html

Thank you.
A friend of mine contacted Starling online chat. They said they do not routinely close accounts however I cant help but feel.that should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Hi Flatbroke
We've just entered Bankruptcy, and have just experienced having one of our bank accounts being frozen. Please be aware (I'm not saying all banks will do the same), but we had an account with Santander, which had an overdraft facility, which wasn't being used, and they were allowing payments into the account (salary etc), but did not make any payments to DD set up on the account. I understand the reason why they take this action, but to have received no letter or email from them once the account had been frozen, we only knew this had happened, when I tried to withdraw cash from an ATM. We opened a basic account with them, but they would not transfer existing DD to the new account, this had to be done manually. This still happened although we received a letter from our Trustee, stating that they had no objections to us using the account. The only payments we could withdraw from the account was benefit payments whilst this was investigated.
It took a week to receive our bank cards for new account.

Hope this helps

Hi FlatBroke,

Glad to hear that you have taken the positive step of entering into a plan to deal with your debts.

I’ve had positive experiences with Nationwide Flex Basic account and generally list them as one of the banks to use when setting up a new account for a Trust Deed or Bankruptcy.

I’m afraid I can’t offer much help with the likes of Starling.

In the event the RBS freeze the account your Trustee will be able to email the RBS to request the freeze to be lifted and access granted to the account for you to get the funds.

Main thing to do is make sure you have some cash on you over the festive period just in case the accounts are frozen as your Trustees office could be closed.