Money News

Abbey offers top current account to mortgage customers

Abbey's mortgage customers will soon be able to get the Zero current account, which pays 6% interest and has no overdraft or foreign exchange fees.

Abbey’s (www.abbey.com) parent company Santander is rewarding existing mortgage customers and luring new ones with a new current account.

The Santander Zero current account will be available from January, exclusively to people who have a mortgage with the bank, or open one. It comes with the following benefits:

• A competitive overdraft rate of 12.9%
• No overdraft fees (including authorised, unauthorised and unpaid item charges)
• Fee-free debit card use abroad, no charge for using ATMs worldwide and no foreign exchange fees.
• 6% credit interest on balances up to £2,500, fixed for the first year – providing you pay in £1,000 a month.

António Horta-Osório, chief executive of Santander UK, explained: “The more business you do with us, the more we will offer you in return.”

Vim Maru, director of retail products at Santander UK, added: “There are 15 million people in the UK with a mortgage. I encourage every one of them to switch to one of our best-buy mortgages so that they too can take advantage of fee-free banking with the Santander Zero current account.”

In the last two weeks Abbey has launched a new best-buy two-year fixed-rate mortgage and a range of fee-free mortgage deals for existing customers.

The Santander Zero current account will be available to mortgage customers at Abbey and Bradford & Bingley from 11 January 2010, when the two banks will be rebranded as Santander.

It will also be available to Alliance & Leicester mortgage customers later in 2010, when it too is rebranded as Santander.

More information on Abbey mortgages