The latest news to help you get the most from your bank account.
Here’s our monthly update sharing changes for leading UK current accounts and latest offers.
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July’s bank switch offers
New bank switching deals
There’s one new offer, and it’s a big one. There’s potentially up to £300 available from Co-op Bank. The initial switch is a low £125, though that can be boosted to £200 if you stick around for three months. You’ll need to have two direct debits, depositing £1,500 a month and using the debit card five times within 30 days to get the first payment. Then if you repeat these the next month you’ll get an extra £25, and so on for another two months. It’s only for customers who haven’t had a Co-op switch deal since 1 November 2022.
The extra £100 is available to existing customers, not just of Co-op Bank, but also Coventry Building Society (which now owns Co-op Bank) or Smile. You need to have been a customer of one or these as of 21 June 2026, and also qualify for the initial £125 deal.
Ending bank switching deals
First Direct’s switching offer remains increased to a total of £200 until 15 July 2026. This is made up of the usual £175 cash and an additional £25 top up. Don’t forget you can access a 7% regular saver with this bank. There’s also £40 available if you go via TopCashback or Quidco.
Bank of Scotland have a £175 offer. You need to start it by 4 August 2026.
Continuing bank switching deals
HSBC has a £220 switch deal for people moving to its Bank Account.
Barclays still has a £200 offer. Ends 27 August 2026.
Elsewhere, Natwest still offers £200. The same offer is available from RBS and Ulster.
Santander’s switch offer is £180 cash. There’s also a new 8% regular saver you can access.
And Nationwide is offering £175 . Unlike other banks you can get the cash on both a personal and a joint account, but only on the first time for each one.
Premier banking switch offers
There’s also a Premier Banking offer from Barclays, which the bank says is worth up to £600.
HSBC is still offering £500 to new Premier customers.
July’s banking offers
Revolut x IHG offer 30,000 points
There’s a new IHG branded debit card from Revolut with some hefty welcome bonus offers. IHG is a hotel chain, so you’ll only be able to redeem the points at their locations.
The cards themselves operate via your Revolut account, and if you don’t already have one you’ll need it to get the card. However, it doesn’t replace the Revolut debit card. Instead it acts alongside it, so all your transactions will come from the main Revolut account in the app.
There are two options, The Elite card is £18 a month, and if you spend £3,000 on the card in the first three months you’ll get 30,000 IHG One Reward points. This boosted offer is only for applicants before 25 August 2026.
Meanwhile the Essential card is free, but has a lower 10,000 points if you spend £1,000 in the first three months.
The question is what are the points worth? The website Head for Points says they are on average valued at 0.4p. So those 30,000 points could get you £120 towards a hotel stay, but the free card’s 10,000 just £40. However, that’s on average, so it could well be less.
In addition, both cards do have other perks, such as Elite Status at IHG hotels, and the ability to earn points on everyday spending. This is increased for spending in their hotels, but just 0.5 points per pound (so 0.2p) for the Essential and 1.5 points (so 0.6p) for Elite spending in the UK. Further points and perks are awarded based on annual spend with the Elite card.
You can swap points into other schemes at a rate of 5:1. So 10,000 IHG points would be worth 2,000 in Avios.
So, if you regularly use IHG hotels, then the bonus points and perks might be worth a look (though don’t forget the fee on the Elite card). However, for everyday spending I’d still look at using one of our top pick cashback cards – either PayPal+, Trading 212 or American Express Nectar.
Featured switching deal
Customer rating
3.9/5
- Switch bonus£180
- Offer endsUnknown
- Perks8% regular saver
- FSCS Protected? Yes
- Switch bonus requirements Switch using the Current Account Switch Service and close your old account within 60 days of starting the switch
- Deposit requirements Deposit £1,500 in the first 60 days from opening the account
- Direct debits transferred over Set up two Direct Debits before or after the switch from a selected list of household bills
- Existing customers? Can't have held any Santander current account on 1 January 2025
- Restrictions Can't have received a switching bonus from Santander already, offer limited to once per person
- Eligible accounts Open a new or hold an existing Everyday, Edge, Edge Up or Edge Explorer current account
- Regular saver 8% (variable) regular savings account. Includes 5% (variable) bonus for 12 months
July’s banking news
Halifax brand to disappear – what it means for you
If you’ve been following these updates for a while now, you probably weren’t surprised to see Lloyds Bank announce it’s getting rid of Halifax.
First up was the conspicuous lack of bank switching deals (the last one was back in 2023). Then a year ago we saw the scrapping of the popular Halifax Reward account. In January Lloyds announced customers of any of its brands (so Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland) could use the same branches. And more recently you’ve been able to see all your Halifax accounts in the Lloyds app, and vice versa.
And now the news earlier this month that the Halifax brand will disappear completely. So what does that mean for anyone with a Halifax product?
Well, not much really. There will be no change to sort codes, account or card numbers. The same goes for loans, motrtgages and other products. New Lloyds branded cards will be issued at some point.
If you have money saved with both Lloyds and Halifax, there’s no change there either when it comes to protection, as both were covered by the same joint FSCS cover of £120,000.
You will have to move over to the Lloyds app, so watch out for an invite to do this over the coming weeks. If you already also have the Lloyds app then you won’t need to do anything as you can already access all accounts and functions across both brands there.
Lloyds say no Halifax branches will close, they’ll just be rebranded to Lloyds. Though if you’re in a place with both a Lloyds and Halifax or Bank of Scotland and Halifax already, it’s likely one of those is already scheduled to go this year or next
You could argue that one less branded bank will mean less options for customers, though as we’ve already seen, Halifax stopped being distinctively competitive to Lloyds last year.
For those of you using Halifax for YouGov finance I’d suspect the connection will stop. That will be an issue for anyone, like me, who signed up when the cap was 10 accounts. It’s now set at three, so you won’t be able to add new accounts to replace them.
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Our top current accounts for July 2026
I always think it’s worth having more than one current account (find out why here) and here’s my run-down of the top accounts to have this month.
