Everyone is familiar with the high street banks such as HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland, etc but have you ever heard of banks such as Egg, Smile or Cahoot?

These banks are strictly Internet banks and have no physical presence - they are referred to as 'standalone banks'.

Most internet banks are sub-divisions of high street banks: this may be re-assuring to those of you that may be concerned about security issues.

Using an Internet Bank

Because internet banks work solely on-line, they have lower overheads compared to high street banks. This therefore allows them to offer higher interest rates.

The range of services offered will vary between banks i.e. some may offer loans and high interest savings accounts, where some may offer the basics - current account management.

When using an internet bank, you will still receive (via post) credit/debit cards/cheque books on request.

Internet banks are orientated around personal banking and therefore may be unsuitable for business banking (due to their inflexibility to business requests and lack of business support and services).

In addition, contacting the internet bank by phone is usually very costly due to the bank wanting all correspondence to be done via the internet.

Internet Bank Links

Cahoot http://www.cahoot.co.uk/

Egg http://www.egg.com/

Intelligent Finance http://www.if.com/

Smile http://www.smile.co.uk/