Contrary to public belief Banks are not there to look after your money, they are there to make money for their shareholders, they take whatever you place into them, as little or as much as that may be, and they um, 'invest' it, doubling or tripling your little amount and creaming the profits from that to keep thier investors happy.

Are you happy? Well that doesn't matter, you apparently dont figure much in their scheme apart from placing your wages/savings/nesteggs in to their vaults you are for the most part nameless and faceless, Joe Public.

But should you decide to upset, for whatever reason, their image of themselves and decide that they are not the bank that you wish to be with, well, that is when the fun starts.

Have you ever tried closing a bank account? Not easy is it? Have you noticed how you suddenly accrue charges for money that is not there, was not there, and after you have closed the account?

Banks do not like you taking your business elsewhere and will do all they can to try to prevent this,apart from the things that you had asked them to do that is, which is the whole reason that you have decided to move to a new bank.

Did you know that despite the many names of Banks and Building societys that you see or hear about there are actually only four main banks in this country? All the rest are subsideries of these four, some of them are actually jointly owned by two or more of the main four.

Did you know that almost all credit cards are owned by those four banks and an American company called MBNA, for instance, the Alliance and Leicester credit card, MBNA, Virgin are MBNA backed, Abbey National credit card, MBNA.

Sainsburys and Tesco are owned by The Royal Bank of Scotland, who incidently also own Natwest.

Halifax is The Bank of Scotland

HFC are also the Beneficial and Household banks and they own Marbles.

The Clydesdale bank now belongs to Barclays along with Monument, they have also 'bought' The Bank of Scotland credit cards.

So when moving Banks be very careful, as you may not be moving at all?