Look after your savings and spread them between banks

Use our tables to distinguish which banks have separate Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) registrations and which fall under the same institution.

The banks listed in the table below each hold an indipendant FSCS registrations, so if your cash is spead across multiple savings accounts shown in the table £50,000 will be compensated for each account held if the bank were to collapse

For a full up-to-date list on which banks are counted as individual, with an indipendant FSCS registration click Which4u Banks Table. This page is regularly updated to cite any changes in the banking sector.

Grouped Banks The table below shows which banks/building societies fall under the same institution. The banks are also numbered 1-9 to aid colour blind readers. If you have multiple savings accounts that fall within the same colour/number, you will only be covered for up to £50,000 for all accounts. You can still hold multiple accounts with different colours, the key is to mix them, spreading your money across several savings accounts.

HBOS and Lloyds. This merger deal is still in the early stages so a decision has not yet been finalized and is unlikely to be for another few months. For now these two are treated as separate institutions, so if you have savings spread across both, you will still be covered for up to £50,000 for each account held. But make sure you're aware of the core parts of HBOS (Halifax, Bank of Scotland, B'ham Midshires, Intelligent Finance, The AA and Saga) only count as one institution, so if you have multiple accounts more than one of these providers, you will only be liable to receive £50,000 cover overall.

Abbey and A&L. The giant Spanish bank Santander's recently bought both Abbey and Alliance & Leicester. They tell us there are 'no plans to change' their FSA registrations, meaning they will separated in terms of institutions so you're protected up to £50,000 in each.