Natwest Student Banking

Natwest offer a great student package on the face of it. There is a free 5 Year rail card thrown in worth about £150. This is great for most students as it makes the train the same price as the coach so we can save journey time going back and forth from home. There are also various discounts on products like Acer Laptops and 3 mobile broadband. Most other banks offer £50 cash incentive to join their bank so if you don't use the trains then maybe its better to go for a different account. Natwest say that offer a £1500 interest free overdraft in your first year! Great. Actually they only offer £500 in your first term which is the time when you need the ...  Read the complete review

I think NatWest's student account seems to attract a lot of strong opinions, both good and bad! This review is based purely on my own experience. Aged 16 I opened a young person's account with them in order to get 2 free CDs (!). I think this account was called a Card Plus account but I can't be sure, it was eight years ago after all! In the summer before I went to uni, I visited my branch to get my account changed to a Student Account. The process was very straightforward and I got the full £1250 overdraft, a credit card (for emergencies, I may as well say now that I never used it!) and £25 for opening the account - sadly I started uni the year ...  Read the complete review

I went with Natwest's student account just before I started university mainly because of the free young persons railcard, which would've cost me £99 a year, i am now getting one free for all 3 years of my degree - its a student essential for travelling from home to uni! All student accounts these days are at 0% interest... until you leave university. I am only in my second year so I am not in a situation yet where I will have to pay back the interest. Natwest has one of the largest overdrafts on the student accounts, which is a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. It was easy enough for me to expand my overdraft in 5 stages over the ...  Read the complete review

I have only had this account for a few weeks, technically anyway, but I thought I'd start a review of it now, as I have a rather clear idea of how my relationship with Natwest will be from now on. Since I have (perhaps rather lazily) decided to stick with them despite my experiences so far, I will update this review regularly so people can get a clearer idea of a typical student's experience with this bank. ~*~* Why did I decide to go with Natwest? ~*~* -Reasonable Overdraft I didn't by any means rush into the decision of banking with them, I dedicated a few hours to thoroughly looking through all the major competitors websites, picking up a ...  Read the complete review

I'm going to write this review strictly from experience. I think Natwest is probably the best bank for any university student to use. Before going to university I had a nationwide account set up with a visa card and flex account, i also had a back up ISA. At university i like most typical students grew into a habit of clothes shopping and drinking and I ended up drinking myself skint -£800 skint. on an adult overdraft which charged £30 everytime i even went a penny over my £800 limit. I worked in a nightclub at the time and decided I was going to have to work 30 hours as well as university. So Nationwide took away my overdraft and any money i put in I was ...  Read the complete review