Hi y'all
I was wondering if anyone can give some advice on this subject please?
Vita and I opened a joint bank account - no problem. However Vita would very much like her own account. This proved to be tricky as she has no credit rating - we had one of those 'Computer says No' moments today when we tried to open up her own account where we have a joint one.
How has anyone else found this?
Any tips?

FYI we were married September 2010 and hence I've always said that she has been living at my address since August 2010. In theory Vita would have to have lived in Uk for 3 years for the computer to have said yes as I understand it.

We had the same issue with NatWest. *I* as a UK national - having lived abroad for 8 years had no credit rating either ...

Went to Halifax and there was a Malay lady who had had the same crap.. many years before..

We opened the joint

one for me

then one for wifey

and even one for the lad, in 30 minutes

We had a letter from the local council acknowledging their presence at the address, but refusing to allow them on the electoral register and utility letters, National Insurance letters, you name it...

Hope that helps..

Les

I have been with Barclays for donkey years as also with Natwest.

When my wife came over, I added her name on my electricity bill, informed the council about her living here, received the letter from the UKBA, which stated that she has the right to live and work here, before they issued her Resident Card. About 10 days later my wife applied for a NI number and her card was back in a week.

With her passport and all these papers, we went to the Barclays branch where I have my accounts, opened a joint account, a personal one for my wife and also a saving ISA acount.

At the same time, a week later, she received her Debit Card and soon after applied and received a Master's card too.

That is all.

Hope if you go directly to the bank.....with the above papers they will accept her and issue the necessary cards.

Good luck!

No Wiz, it's nothing to do with supporting documentation, it's just down to the bank's internal processes of using external Experian type credit scoring agencies. She will just have to choose another and hope they have different criteria.
By the way it was Nationwide. We may try Halifax as suggested...

Sorry if I got the message wrong but in that respect we probably had the luck to go with banks (Barclays And Natwest) where my Credit Ratings was probably good and posibly helped!

I think I heard somewhere that those ex Building societies now Banks have more stricter criteria....... I am sure I am wrong again.

Well, Wiz.. Halifax was an ex-building society..;)

@LesH

Write to Experian - with a letter from the local council - re refusal to put your Wife on the electoral register - and some ultility bills in joint nanes and ask 'em to file an exception report


Once they have Wifey on file, you should find things easier..

Failing that I suggest that you try making an appointment at our Branch of Halifax in Glos'shire - The Manageress is the same ;)

Well I could say 'wrong again Wiz' :) as MY credit rating would be (apparently) irrelevant with respect to Vita opening up a sole account.

So Les, it is down to the bank and we happen to be lucky choosing the right ones!

Could it be the reason that my wife stated she needed an account for her salary to be paid?

Probably yes.

Just been through this ridiculous farce trying to get Anna an account.

Tried to get her onto my account with Nationwide, who I've been with for years, refused on the grounds that she has no credit rating.

Called them and ended up speaking to some spotty kid of 19 who told me that Anna should get a mobile phone contract first! Obviously this kid is a genius. When I pointed out that she couldn't get a mobile phone contract without a bank account he seemed confused. So in the end I politely told him to f**k off and get me someone who knew what they were talking about. He seemed a bit put out by my frankness but passed me on to another spotty youth who described himself as the previous twit's manager.

No, my wife couldn't have an account with Nationwide she could only have a basic cash card and no he didn't care if I closed my accounts.
I have his name and a letter is winging its way to the chairman of Nationwide as we speak.

First stop, HSBC.So, being less than gruntled, I decided to gird my loins and visit all the banks in my high street to see if I could find a bank who would like to do business with me.

I have to admit from the start that I frequent banking establishments very infrequently and perhaps my view was clouded by those distant memories of going to open my very first bank account at the Midland Bank, accompanied by my Dad.

In those far-off days of yore, you had to see the Bank Manager, a man who demanded respect, a man who you looked up to, a paragon of virtue and old-fashioned financial probity. I entered his office, this inner sanctum of fiduciary confidence, the great oak desk and the slow, steady tick-tock of the case clock on the mantlepiece serving to remind me of the power and greatness of the establishment.

In those days, getting a bank account was in the gift of the Manager, he, and he alone, had the authority to decide whether you were the kind of person who would could be relied on to remain financially solvent before allowing you to become a member of his august institution, instantly bestowing upon you respectability and standing within the community.

But in the Hornchurch branch of HSBC, which absorbed the Midland Bank into its bloated empire, what I got was a sweaty fat girl called Mandy who had thick red lips, cheeks like the bloated arse of a slaughtered pig and no discernable neck, who told me that I couldn't have a bank account for my wife because the computer system said so.

When I questioned the tubby munter as to whether there was someone in higher authority who could perhaps override the decision of the computer, the bloated face stared at me like an undercooked pancake, a blank canvas of incomprehension. Two piggy eyes gave no clue as to whether or not there was a functioning brain behind them.

Eventually the quivering lips of the monster parted and uttered the word: "Wot?"

At this point I wasn't sure if I had been unknowingly transported to an alien galaxy by the invisible machinations of the Large Hadron Collider, where analogue life forms are subservient to the binary intelligentsia.

I decided to attempt a simpler form of communication with the amorphous creature that stood before me.

"A manager" I said clearly and with just the right amount of authority. After all, I reasoned, the rudimentary life form may understand the voice of authority rather than the voice of a whining, pleading customer.

"Wot?"

Now, you can sit with a monkey for a thousand years explaining Einstein's general theory of relativity in the hope of developing the monkey into a superior being, but in the end you'll still be talking to a monkey.

So I bade the blue suited half-wit farewell and made my escape into the afternoon sunshine.

Next stop, Lloyds TSB.

Now this is the bank whose advertising pitch used to be based on the claim that they were "The bank that likes to say yes". So I entered the modernist glassy sanctum to make enquiries as to the likelihood of them saying yes to my wife.

I won't bore you with the details but the answer was no.

Whereupon I took it upon myself to berate the bespectacled harridan who had the temerity to cast doubt upon the honour of my beloved, and anyone else within earshot. I must admit that my dander was up and perhaps I may have been a little less than polite when I said:

"So your bank is quite happy to say yes to billions of pounds of taxpayers money, of which I am one, so that you and your feckless colleagues can remain in employment whilst untold millions of decent, hard working people find themselves stripped of their money and dignity, but you won't say yes to my wife's business?

Madam, you try my patience! And while you're trying mine, I'll take the liberty of trying yours. F**ck you and good afternoon. I marched out of the door with nary a backward glance, but I could hear the sharp collective intake of breath and the gutteral mutterings of the insulted.

Undeterred by the apparent cartel of refusal ranged against me, I proceeded with a jaunty step to my next port of call.
The soothing blue interior of Barclays awaited me with a cool but friendly greeting.

A nice young lady smiled at me, her head tilted ever so slightly in that ever so friendly way that people who work in customer service type jobs go on courses to learn. It puts people at ease and makes them feel more comfortable y'see.

Anyway, Jenny - for that was the name on her badge; either that or her left tit was called Jenny - listened intently to my supplication and nodded with just the right amount of concern at the appropriate points in the conversation. Oh yes, she understood my frustration, she shared my pain, as it were, that the unfeeling brutes in the previous ports of call had treated me so shabbily.

"But," she assured me, "I can't see any reason why we can't help you, we like to think that Barclays is different to other banks"

So we looked at what was on offer and found it lacking. To cut a long story short, it turned out that Barclays was no more use than a chocolate teapot and if there were any differences between it and the other banks, they were invisible to my discerning eye.

We could have a card cash account which doesn't help to build up a credit rating and therefore offers the same benefits as an ash tray on a motorcycle.

Goodbye Barclays.

Similar stories unfolded at the Halifax and Santander, but I was not to be defeated until
the last bank in town had shown me the door.

There was now only one avenue left to explore.

The dreaded and dreadful NatWest.

Why, you may reasonably ask, do I make such negative utterences against said institution?

Because me and them have history. I was once a loyal customer, a fully paid up member of the NatWest appreciation society. I was once invited, with a couple of chums, to the home of the then chairman, Lord Alexander of Weedon, to fix his telephone system and then have tea and cake. And very pleasant it was too. An imposing stucco'ed mansion adjacent to Little Venice in London, where we discussed cricket and photography in his delightful garden whilst enjoying delicious Earl Grey from exquisite porcelain cups.

We chatted merrily away for a while, discussing the pros and cons of the Leica versus the Nikon, the various quirks and delights of Kodakachrome, Tri-X and FP4 and whether boycott should have made more runs in his career, when his Lordship - known to his chums as Bob, tipped us the wink on Natwest shares.

Little did I know but a few months later NatWest would become victim to a hostile takeover bid by the upstart Royal Bank of Scotland, resulting in much pain and aggravation for yours truly because I disregarded the noble Lord's advice and failed to purchase a single share.

When the takeover bid was announced, the share price rocketed. I watched in horror as my one chance of a financial killing evaporated before my very eyes. The smirking Jocks had defeated the sassenachs yet again. My crest was well and truly fallen.

Be that as it may, I still had a job to do, an unfulfilled quest to complete.

I approached the enquiry desk, behind which sat a rather unkempt ruffian who looked at me with the face of a man who knew what the inside of both a police cell and the A&E ward on a Saturday night looked like. It made a change from the simpering Stepford wives I had become accustomed to.

I imagined he was bouncer, employed by NatWest to enforce a certain dress code on prospective punters. Undeterred by the scowling rake, I demanded satisfaction from his establishment in the form of a bank account for the missus. A proper one mind, not a toy one that only gives out beer vouchers from a machine stuck in a wall. In short, a pukka job complete with all the necessary bits and bobs required to bestow upon darling wifey that which is necessary for acquiring the status of real person as opposed to non-person. In short, credit rating.

"I can give you an appointment tomorrow at 2pm" rasped the shaven-headed thug.

"What do we need to bring with us?" I enquired with a certain noblese oblige.

"You better bring your wife for a start mate" said the surly upstart with an expression not unlike a man who knows he can rip your head off.

"I know that, I mean what bits of paper will you need to have a look at" I averred with some irritation.

The unshaven face fixed me with a stony, murderous glare and said in the kind of quiet, threatening tones no doubt employed by the Kray twins: "passport, utility bill, wife. See you tomorrow" at which point he disengaged his eyes from mine and sauntered off to have a well-earned cup of coffee and punch someone in the head.

Tomorrow at 2pm arrived and so did me and my Russian. Upon arrival at NatWest we were ushered into a small room and informed that Tom would be with us very shortly. Within a minute Tom did indeed arrive and he turned out to be the very character I had crossed swords with the day before, except without the surly expression and threatening snarl. In fact he was charm itself. And what's more, within five minutes Anna had her proper bank account.

How strange, I mused as we skipped back home. Yesterday this fellow bore a distinct resemblance to a case-hardened member of the criminal fraternity, whose hobbies probably involved a certain amount of short, sharp brutality and shallow graves on remote moors and yet today this very same ne'er do well is my new friend.

No wonder there was a financial crisis.

You've got to laugh.