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Finding a good deal on a business bank account is much the same as trying to find a deal on anything else nowadays, the internet is really your first point of call. Unfortunately the net being the way it is anything financial is just filled with mostly useless information, and paid for advertising.

What you need to find is a comparison site that gives you easy access to a lot of information and the ability to filter for criteria you are and are not interested in. The two best I found were:

http://www.moneysupermarket.com an excellent and well known site, it's worth using for anything money related, not just business bank accounts.

http://bba.moneyfacts.co.uk the site of the British Bankers Association and a surprisingly good and unbiased comparison site.

Moneysupermarket has the better filtering, but Moneyfacts has the more helpful initial comparison chart, as it lists all the fees immediately.

You will probably see that the best offers are for new customers and that's always going to be true, but if you don't mind chopping and changing you can get some exceedingly good deals for anything between 12 and 24 months after which you can just move on again. Working this way can potentially save yourself a lot of money, although there is more work involved for you.

A business account is not a must for self-employed contractors, being a sole trader means that you can use a personal account for all your business transactions. Most banks now will happily set up secondary current accounts linked to your primary account to allow for easier tracking of incoming payments and general money management.

Hugo
26/08/2009