Are your savings at risk ?

If you have an account with a bank or building society and it becomes insolvent do you know if you will be covered under the terms of the financial services compensation scheme (fscs) ?

The fscs covers banks and building societies that are authorised by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The FSA regularly update the list of authorised firms and the most recent can be found here. If a bank you have an account with is not on the list it may be because it falls under a group authorisation.

The fscs will pay compensation up to a limit of £85000 for sole accounts and up to £170000 for a joint account. This is generally well known by savers, but what can catch savers out, however, is that these limits apply to all accounts held with institutions who operate under the same banking licence.

For example, Bank of Scotland, Halifax, Birmingham Midshires, Intelligent Finance, SAGA and The AA all operate under the same banking licence, as do Nationwide, Derbyshire, Dunfermline & Cheshire Building Societies.

You can find out if the institutions you have your savings with are considered part of the same bank for compensation purposes here