What Would Your Perfect Premium Account Look Like?

Terms and conditions changed in November 2019. Scuba diving is covered, but only to a depth of 18 metres when accompanied by a qualified diving instructor or another diver with an appropriate recognised diving qualification.

I had alread booked and planned my trip to Egypt for March 2020. I only discovered the change to the Nationwide policy when a revised terms and conditions was sent to me as part of policy updates. I actually then bothered to read the terms and conditions, upon which I discoverd the change to the diving depth limits, which I believe used to be 30 metres. As I say, I then had no choice but to buy a standalone diving insurance policy from DAN to make sure if I had a diving accident, I was properly covered. And so that will be the case in future, I have to buy a separate policy.

I wonder though, how many other FlexPlus insurance holders out there who are also qualified divers, have bothered to check the T’s&C’s? Could prove to be a very very expensive oversight if something terrible happened whilst diving. Decompression fees are absolutely horrendous and then there’s the cost of a Medevac, well over £20k in most cases.

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I believe you can buy extra cover via calling up their line, UK Insurance Limited will answer; they also do the same for existing health conditions (so i guess at least you can keep it all under one insurer and extend it 12 meters rather than having 2 policies that cover the same thing to a certain depth and then one that goes further)

I’m well aware I could have phoned and spoke to the insurance provider, but I’d rather buy a policy from a dedicated specific diving insurer. I’m not at all bothered about keeping it ‘under one roof’ It’s all about the detail, DAN are very well respected in the diving community.

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I think I always checked the diving Ts&Cs on the Nationwide policy before each trip. As you say, I’d rather take the trouble than have problem with insurance on top of what could be a life-threatening incident.

I no longer have a FlexPlus account, so will be buying dive-appropriate cover when I next go.

By the way, where do you enjoy diving? I’ve dived loads of places, but Tenerife combines excellent sport, with convenience (just don’t drive up the volcano after a dive, unless you fancy the Bends!). Malaysia was another special trip.

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I do the vast majority of my diving in the Caribbean, Antigua, Exuma in the Bahamas, Jamaica, I’m very much a warm water diver. I enjoyed the Red Sea dive, but I still prefer the Carib.

As for insurance, previously, as you are aware, I was covered ok with Nationwide, but I guess if they end up with divers on their FlexPlus policies who are regularly diving in excess of 18 metres, the chances of a diving accident do increase and so do the costs of dealing with the fallout.

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I don’t think there’s anything there that is particularly contentious - or indeed useful and priceworthy in what is on offer for a large proportion of the population.

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I see you have quite a list of reasons why you wouldn’t want to pay for a premium account and that is entirely your choice.

Nationwide’s FlexPlus is for my Wife and I, great value if (pre-Covid) we take all of our annual trips into consideration and taking age into consideration, we can’t get travel insurance for a Worldwide annual mult-trip policy that suits our situation for the price the Nationwide policy gives us.

Breakdown cover, well we both have a car and whilst they are both properly maintained, I wouldn’t want to be without the cover. A joint policy with the major players out there, isn’t cheap.

Mobile phones, well be both have iphone XR’s which we bought outright from the Apple Store, again, not cheap at nearly £800 a pop.

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Hear me out but a good premium account for me would:

  • Worldwide travel insurance incl pre-existing health conditions because apparently they can turn anything into your existing health condition to get out of paying
  • Mobile insurance, minimum 2 phones, but preferably 3-5, with a reasonable excess
  • Currency accounts offered
  • “Personal” account manager or at least someone to talk to about optimising my finances
  • Worldwide breakdown cover
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Interesting, I don’t regularly take my car with me to Antigua or Cape Town, I usually hire a car which is obviously covered for breakdown by the hire company. Is there a reason why you’d need worldwide breakdown cover? I’m assuming you are talking about car/vehicle cover?

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Some of the premium accounts work for people. I would wager that most do not, and the banks make a profit on the fact that many people don’t claim or use the insurance.

Ironically, we get the same travel insurance as the FlexPlus from a legacy account that Nationwide no longer offer.

I could probably go further than Europe by car since I have family in quite a few Eurasian / Asian countries, so if I’m driving a car over there I’d like to be covered too

Not that I’d be covered, I can’t drink here as anything but a learner, but it’s a lot more lenient in those other countries I’d go to :rofl:
*in reality I’m talking about when I get my full U.K. license, + it covers if you’re in someone else’s car

Well of course they do. Insurance is after all about whether or not something is going to happen or not. I choose to pay the £13 a month ‘just in case’. We could discuss all day long about whether an account is worth the premium, but if people are willing to pay for it, then who’s to say whether it’s good value or otherwise? For me, it is good value in my opinion. At the end of the day, if people aren’t using the product, it’s up to them to cancel it. If the bank makes a profit, then good on 'em.

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I genuinely couldn’t be bothered to ever take my car outside of the UK, indeed, I’ve only ever done so once for a very short hypermarket trip to France over 2 decades ago.

Driving outside of the U.K. always feels a lot busier to me personally and a lot more difficult. Like the roads have this thing where they just flow and you pray it works

Worldwide travel insurance incl pre-existing health conditions

VERY good luck finding even an insurance company that offers that - particularly if you’ve had a stroke, cancer, or a heart attack without breaking the bank.

Currency accounts offered

Perhaps if they offered IBANs, a Maestro card, and direct debits in and out. I’m not holding my breath, I must say.

“Personal” account manager or at least someone to talk to about optimising my finances

These companies are run on minimal costs and staff to speak to being a premium offer seems a bit off.

The problem with the investment side of things is that I find with these is that they either offered a set of investments from the walled garden of partner firms they have a deal with (or indeed just their own products), or they sell you whoever pays them the highest commission.

I was reading elsewhere about a premium bank account with a mainstream bank with a (cough) ‘dedicated customer services team’ - the sole advantage was that you didn’t wait 5 to 10 minutes for an answer. Once you were through to them, however, the kind of transactions you can do yourself online were fine, but anything more complex than that, you were transferred back to the mainstream call centre (this included setting up new payees!), where you had to explain the whole thing again from scratch. That’s not what you want a “premium service” for.

The only country I ever really feel 100 percent comfortable driving is, South Africa, because, well, it’s virtually exactly the same as driving here in the UK, same side of the road, almost the same driving rules with minimal differences.

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In fairness, I have depression, not heart problems (had some scans recently and I’m fine thankfully)

Nationwide wanted an extra £100 a year to cover me for it, to which I was told I didn’t need to get it

But I was also told outside of the insurer that if I had a drink and fell and broke my arm, they might not cover it and excuse it as me drinking due to depression

It’s a weird slope.

There’s your USP for your challenger bank. If Metro offered this as a service, I’d actually be interested in opening an account

I’m pretty sure you always used to be Abel to talk to the bank manager to get some finance advice, in fact in Duncan Bannatyne’s book he states that your first port of call should be building a relationship with them because he can be the one to know your business in enough deal to convince them to give you finance

Isn’t Japan on the left, too? With similar rules except 0.0% blood alcohol content and a major prison sentence if you do

One of the traffic light colours are different, too

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It is - as is India if I recall.

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There’s quite a few countries which drive on the left, just no one ever wants to talk about them :laughing:

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I’m pretty sure you always used to be able to talk to the bank manager to get some finance advice, in fact in Duncan Bannatyne’s book he states that your first port of call should be building a relationship with them because he can be the one to know your business in enough deal to convince them to give you finance

This was probably the case 30 to 40 years ago, but is never going to happen again. It will all be down to algorithms, and risk engines, there’s little or no chance of that happening again in mainstream banks, still less neo-banks.

Duncan Bannatyne made his kids call him “Sir”, not sure I could ever take advice or deal with someone who did that to their staff, still less his kids.

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