James Holian responds to your questions and feedback

Thank you to those of you who gave feedback about FreeAgent, the accounting software that is included with your bank account. For those of you who are using it already, it’s brilliant that it’s having such an impact on you. And, if you’re not using it or not aware of it, I suggest you look into it. It’s award-winning accounting software and it’s included for everybody who banks with us.

Many of you have noticed that interest rates have been changing and you’ve been thinking about which are the best deposit accounts for your business. Whether that’s instant access savings, notice accounts, there are different ways to earn you more interest on your money. Whether you’re saving for investment, saving for a tax bill or anything else, please take a look at our website and find the product that is best for you.

We’ve been pleased to hear form many of you who have enjoyed going to some of the events we’ve been running, we run events all over the country, in person. And, we also run virtual events. They’re great opportunities for you to meet some experts, meet other businesses, they could be future customers or suppliers. And, to just generally expand your network. I’d also urge all of you, if you’ve not attended one to please attend one of our fraud focused seminars, either in person or virtually. You can find out about all of these things on our website.

We had some questions from customers who have loans with us and are struggling to pay back those loans. And, the first thing I would say is if you’re in that situation, please don’t delay. Give us a call and we can discuss options with you. If you have a Bounce Back Loan with us, there are some specific options for you to consider. And, as I said the first thing to do if you are struggling is please just give us a call and we can talk through options.

We had lots of questions on branches and ways to do banking in person. We have one of the biggest branch networks of any bank in the UK. We also have a number of mobile branches and community pop-ups and you can find out where they are in your local areas by looking at our website. You can also do basic baking needs within post offices. That’s paying in cheques, paying in cash, withdrawing cash. And, if you need support 24/7 there’s always our mobile and online offerings too.

We had a few questions from businesses who are looking to borrow in the next few months and how they can best prepare, there’s a few things to think about when doing that. The first one is obviously getting the various bits of materials ready. So, knowing your credit score, gathering together recent financial accounts and get ready in that kind of paperwork way. The second thing to do is to think about what product you need or what type of borrowing you want, whether that’s an overdraft or a certain type of loan and there’s more details on our website about that. And, then there’s the borrowing process. So when you’re ready please go on our website, go onto the app or please just give us a call. We’d be delighted to help.