Lloyds Business Bank Account

Get Free Business Banking for up to 18 Months

Lloyds offer a free business banking account for 18 months UK small businesses starting up and 6 months free for switching to their account.

Once the 18 months free banking is finished then you'll be placed onto their regular business bank account and incur the standard charges. Here's our review of Lloyds TSB bank accounts for business.

An Overview of the Lloyds Business Banking Offer

Lloyds business banking logo

The Lloyds free banking offer runs like most of the other high street banks in that for the first 18 months for start-up business owners and 6 months for switchers there are absolutely no fees to be paid for running your bank account.

Here's a summary of what Lloyds offer on all their business account for start-ups:

  • Free business banking for 18 months
  • Free internet banking currently used by 200,000 UK businesses
  • Free telephone banking
  • Free Sage business planning software
  • 90 trial of Sage start-up accounting software then a 50% discount
  • Support from your own personal relationship manager
  • Apply online or over the telephone
  • Open for new business start-ups only
  • Businesses switching to Lloyds get 6 months free banking but no Sage software offers
  • All new accounts are available for businesses with a turnover up to £15 million

An Overview of the Business Extra Account

Once your 18 months (or 6 months for switchers) free banking is finished with Lloyds you'll be placed onto their business extra tariff which has standard rates for every day transactions.

This is their only standard tariff and has a £5 per month account maintenance fee. Some examples of their fees are as follows:

  • Monthly maintenance charge of £5
  • Bill payment charge 40p
  • Cheques paid 65p
  • Standing order 40p
  • Branch cash in 0.57%
  • Credit interest of 0% - this is an interest earning account but because the base rate is so low there is no rate currently payable.

Lloyds Electronic Business Tariff (Almost free banking)

You can opt to manage your account online via the internet banking services or other automated methods such as the telephone. For all electronic transactions the charges are zero although you won't earn any credit interest on positive balances (although those rates are going to be very low).

  • Monthly account fee £5
  • Bill payment charge 0p
  • Cheques paid 65p
  • Standing order 0p
  • Branch cash in 0.89%

As you can see all automated transactions are free but cheques incur their standard tariff but the biggest change is for depositing cash in branch which is a "market leading" 0.89% - so if you take a lot of cash receipts this account is probably not for your business.

Other Lloyds Business Banking Services

Lloyds also offer various special bank accounts if you run a club, society or charity, a school or college, a credit union, a clients' call account, a designated clients' account or a shariah approved islamic business bank account. Lloyds can also offer private banking services.

More About Lloyds

Lloyds has been named bank of the year for the fifth year running and is currently known as the Lloyds banking group after being renamed in January 2009 after it aquired HBOS - before this they were known as Lloyds TSB. They own a whole host of companies including Black Horse, Car Select, Cheltenham and Gloucester, Scottish Widows and Halifax Bank of Scotland group.