Packaged bank accounts

A packaged bank account is a current account that charges a monthly fee. It's sometimes known as a ‘gold’ or ‘rewards’ account.

In exchange, you get a bundle of extra benefits including things like travel insurance, a fee-free overdraft, car breakdown cover, or rewards for spending.

While the monthly cost is usually less than buying each benefit separately, a packaged bank account only offers good value if you use the added extras.

People come to us when they:

• believe they were mis-sold their packaged bank account
• are unhappy with an insurance product attached to their packaged bank account.

If you’re unhappy with an insurance product attached to the account, find out how to make an insurance complaint.

You may believe the account was mis-sold. This might be because you:

• weren’t given a choice between a packaged account and one that doesn’t charge fees
• didn’t know how much the account would cost or what the add-on features would be
• couldn’t use one of the account’s features
• didn’t want or need some of the features that came with the account because you already had them
• didn’t realise you were opening a packaged bank account
• were told by the bank that you had to open the account to get another product or service – such as an overdraft, credit card or loan.

Our service is free and easy to use. 

1. Before bringing your complaint to us, you should make a complaint to the company involved.
2. If they don’t send you a final response letter within eight weeks – or you're unhappy with their response – you can complain to us.
3. Our complaint checker will tell you more about some of the things we need to know upfront and help you make sure you’re ready to send us your complaint.
4. Fill in our online complaint form. Your case will be assigned to a case handler who will get in touch when they start to investigate.
5. To help us consider a complaint fairly, we may ask you for more information later.

Use our complaint checker

We’ll assess what happened using evidence from you, the financial business and any relevant third parties. We’ll also consider:  

• the relevant law, and any regulations and industry codes of conduct that applied at the time 
• the terms and conditions of the account in question.

We’ll look at how the bank sold the account to you, which may include considering whether:

• you were given a fair choice and, if relevant, offered free alternatives
• the account features were clearly explained
• you were told how much the account would cost
• the account might have been useful for you at that time.

If you didn’t want, couldn’t use, or didn’t need, any of the account’s features, we may say it wasn’t right for you. But we’re unlikely to say that the bank was wrong to sell you the account simply because you chose not to use them.

When we investigate these complaints, we’ll look at the account benefits and your circumstances at the time when the account was sold to you – even if these have changed since.

Once we’ve investigated, we’ll tell you whether we believe you've been treated unfairly or not. And we’ll explain how we reached our decision. 

If we think you've lost money, we’ll tell the bank to put things right. We may also tell them to pay you compensation for any distress or inconvenience caused.

What to expect