Non-ringfenced bank

[AtomicWambsgans]

If I deposit 85k into a non-ringfenced bank, will I still be protected?

Does the bank/account say it is FSCS protected?

Check here: FSCS Check

What’s a non ring fenced bank? Do you mean one not in the FSCS scheme?

If it’s a bank, it’s protected by the FSCS (assuming that’s what you mean - ‘ring fenced’ in banking tends to be used differently).

Tell us where you put your money, and knowledgeable people here can get to the bottom of it!

Thanks for the responses. I'm looking into depositing funds into a UK high street bank and before doing so, I was warned online that it is an non ring fenced bank, so it made me wonder if it would affect the £85k protection by the FSCS.

Who "warned online that it is an non ring fenced bank"?

This doesn't make any sense.

Which bank is it?

Any deposit up to £85k in a UK highstreet bank account will be protected by the FSCS, which means your money will be safe in the (hopefully!) unlikely event that the bank fails.

But….

’Ringfenced’ when people talk about banks is about splitting retail and investment banking, which probably isn’t relevant here but might be confusing things.

Are you 100% certain that you are moving any money actually to the bank you expect, not someone pretending that’s the case? Remember that scams can be very sophisticated with fake websites etc.

If you’re thinking about some investment products (eg a stocks and shares ISA) then your money might go down even if it’s run by a highstreet bank (the FSCS doesn’t work in the same way for these).

Ring fencing is different to FSCS protection.

The largest UK banks have had to ring fence (separate) their retail banking businesses (normal everyday savings, overdrafts etc for normal members of the public) from their riskier businesses like investment banking.

This only applies to the biggest banks (those with core deposits over £25billion), so there are lots of medium and small banks in the UK who do not have ring fencing in place. In fact, as of January 2022, only seven UK banks were in scope of ring fencing, so the vast majority of banks are not ring fenced.

Irrespective of ring fencing, deposits of up to £85,000 per person are protected in banks, building societies and credit unions (including in Northern Ireland) that are authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority (part of the Bank of England). The thing to watch out for here is that some authorised firms have different brands e.g. Clydesdale has Virgin Money and Yorkshire Bank, so you’d only get £85,000 protected across all these brands as they’re owned by the one firm. You can check this on the FSCS or Bank of England websites.

This thread could have been about 2 posts if the question was "Is X bank FSCS protected up to £85k?"

It's a well-known high st bank so I am assuming it is protected, but I wanted more information, or the possibility of someone providing more information, as I had no prior experience of non-ringfenced banks. Having deposited relatively large funds into a savings and investments platform and being warned that the particular bank was non-ringfenced, I didn't want to take any risks.

Which bank is it?