2014 Lender Lists:

Short Term Loans | Payday Loans | Instalment Loans | 12 Month Loans
Doorstep Loans | Guarantor Loans | Logbook Loans

The objective of our investigation into overdrafts was to pick out 20 providers and we have now come to our final 20th selection. For this choice we picked out another building society. We have previously covered Nationwide who are the biggest by some distance. Britannia left this sector when they were acquired by The Co-op. Yorkshire who are now the second largest were skipped since they offer no current accounts and so we went with the UK’s third largest being Coventry Building Society. They were established in 1884 and can be found at www.coventrybuildingsociety.co.uk. They have 70 branches with most of these being located across the Midlands.

There is one single current account available that is called the Coventry First. You need to deposit £1000 each month to receive their headlined interest rate of 1.1% AER in your first year. Otherwise the rate provided is 0.95%. The first year bonus is 0.85% and so this should follow as 0.25% (when paying £1000 in) or 0.1% on your balances in the following years. For the Coventry Building Society overdraft charges, you are initially handed with £250 interest-free. When this is surpassed there is a £5 monthly usage fee within an agreed limit. For unauthorised borrowing this fee is priced at £25 over the month.

If there are any transactions that are returned here then the unpaid fees come in at £8. This account can be fully managed through www.coventrybuildingsociety.co.uk and their telephone advisors can be reached every day with telephone self-service also being available 24/7. They have developed their products in such a way that it doesn’t matter so much if you have no local branch. The Coventry overdraft charges are quite straight forward and well priced so long as you don’t step into the red. Their first year interest at 1.1% is ok, but Nationwide’s FlexDirect grants 5% in the first 12 months (it then lowers to 1%).