Best bank account for 13 year old?

[Lillybobs86]

I am looking for a high street bank where I can open a bank account for my 13 year old where I can still keep an eye or get notifications of their spending.
I need one where the parent does not have to be an account holder already.

Under 19s Bank Account | Teen and Child Account | TSB Bank
-You can both be logged into their online banking, so that you get spending notifications and can have a look at what they're spending.

As mentioned above does the parent have to be an account holder ??

We do NatWest rooster. I opened an account to get it free. I don’t use that new account though.

NatWest rooster as pp says it’s free if you open an account or £20 a year if you don’t.

DS has GoHenry but it was working out quite expensive. Now switched to Monzo. He's 11.

Nationwide - full online banking with app you can both have on your phone but parent does not need to be named on the account nor an existing Nationwide customer.

My DC have a range of different accounts with Nationwide and for the last two years have also received a £100 bonus

Monzo for day to day. It’s great

Ah sorry, I missed that. Metro Bank doesn't require the parent to have an account Young savers account | For those Aged 21 and Under | Metro Bank

Thank you this is interesting as I asked in branch a few months ago and they said I couldn't have access ... do you know which type of account that was please? 🙏🏽

The current account is the FlexOne account
You don't need to organise access, just have their app logged onto DC account on your phone

@unourrite Ah ok that wouldn't work as bank with nationwide and have the app already on my phone, thank you though.

Why do you need access to DC account? When both DD turned 11 I opened an HSBC account for them - savings and current, and they manage it all. Why do you need to see what they are spending? At what age do you stop that?

Thank you for your concern @fufulina however my child has some health conditions and vulnerabilities which means we still need to keep an eye on spending more than their peers that age.
As each parent knows their child best we are looking for an account that still has freedom but where we could still monitor spending if we needed to,
Thank you for your comment and concern but wasn't looking for parenting advice just advice on bank accounts available 👍🏽

@fufulina has a fair point. For us the whole point of ds having a bank account was to teach him responsibility with guidance. Every parent has the worries of their financially inexperienced dc potentially overspending, whether that is due to showing off, peer pressure, vulnerabilities or a dozen other reasons. There are ways to handle that while allowing them to take on responsibility at the same time. ime kids won't learn to step up when you give them responsibilities if they know you don't trust them and giving him a grown up account while saying I have the password and I am watching you takes the shine off that growing up step for them.

The main ways of protecting them are - 1) don't put anything more than the money they are free to spend / pocket money in their account so it is very low risk 2) talk to them about how it is going/or go through their spending together with them for the first couple of months, 3) let them bear the consequences and learn the lessons of any mistakes (worth losing a few quid for them to learn invaluable lessons).

ds had a Nationwide Flexi one account and savings account and he could transfer between them. There wasn't much in the savings account just somewhere to hold birthday/christmas money and it was there to encourage him to budget and keep it for something special/big he wanted rather the fritter it away (didn't always work, but he learnt from that too when the next FIFA game came out and his friends had it and he couldn't afford it anymore, or his friends were going out somewhere he couldn't afford to).

It is something to reflect on from someone who has been through it before and whose dc made and learnt from some cracking mistakes - lessons that I can see positively influence his attitude to spending his own money now he is at uni (he has no problems spending my money when he has the chance!). I am not telling you how to parent.

When ds was younger I could sign into his Nationwide account on a desktop if I had a note of the password. Nationwide don't need to know you are doing this.

If they have vulnerabilities you can get proper guardianship accounts, these allow you to set limits have other named adults etc. Most teen accounts are designed to give them responsibility and learn to manage money rather than a parent managing their account

Again thank you for your comment - my child has health conditions which I am not going into but I may need to monitor if needed.
Your child is different to mine I'm glad your child had full responsibility- but I will need to monitor if needed - thank you for your comment.
And thank you for your advice.

I can’t rate the rooster highly enough you add to parent balance and you have a parent app they have a child’s. Child has a debit card and you can set it to be used as contactless or not block
atm it online if you want. Everytime they spend something you get a notification on your phone and you can look back at transactions. Well worth the £20 annual fee or the time to set up a Nat west account that you never need to use.

I added photos that will show after being reviewed.

I've got a Lloyds account and got one for my dd and honestly the push notices for when she's spent money when out are more accurate than gps tracking...

Ah sorry @Lillybobs86 didn't read the op properly re parent not needing to be account holder.