Cater Allen Avis 

I have been a Cater Allen customer since the days of Robert Fleming Private Bank. For more than 25 years I have received consistently excellent service, for a low price, and with multi currency banking. My turnover has increased from 60k to 5 million per year.

Before the “upgrade” Cater Allen was unusable for a company of my size. Wages were a 30-45 minute phone call, with an advisor handling 30 U.K. transactions, 6 international payments, and agreeing preferential rates for currency exchange. It was simply inadequate.

Sine the “upgrade” banking has dramatically improved. The batch load facility allows me to pay all wages by faster payment simply by loading 1 file. This is more accurate and takes less than 90 seconds.

I could not disagree more with the complaints on this review site. However, I operate a cash rich company, and have never had loans. If you need access to debt, Cater Allen is not for you.

Like others, I very rarely write bad reviews. I came on here to see if other Cater Allen customers have had such a bad time with their new website and customer service and see the universally dreadful recent reviews. They used to be wonderful, easy to deal with and great on the phone. I emailed the other day having waited 12 minutes to get through on the phone and then when I reached an operator they hung up. I dropped them an email to complain about that and ask for advice about the issue I had about amending a pending payment. Four days later I got a completely useless reply, blaming Covid and saying they hoped I was happy with the response but if not I could contact the ombudsman. No apology and no advice. I replied saying I was rather appalled at their response, hit 'send', got a message saying my request had been denied and kicking me out of the website. They really have gone from the best to the very worst. So frustrating.

I've been with Cater Allen for 6 years, the website was basic but simple and easy to use. The new website is an abhorrent nightmare in which banking dreams go to die. Seriously though its shockingly bad, with no thought as to how a human may actually operate. I genuinely cannot understand what they were thinking. It's now virtually impossible to undertake simple tasks. Shame, but is the kick I needed to finally move banks...

Horrific ...please I've had enough . Last straw with this bank. Who is running it is a complete clown should be fired immediately.
New system is abhorrent I'm so mad, like I don't have a million other problems and to deal with these absolute imbeciles creating over the top awkward security that's still easy to hack.

Opened a new business account 2 months ago and never been able to use it. They don't do what they say and won't deal with your complaints. Fed up with idle promises not followed up on. Complete waste of time and effort. Best avoided unless you just want to gift them all your earnings. Don't normally leave reviews but others deserved to be aware if considering CaterAllen.

Been with Cater Allen and it's predecessors for over 30 years. From an excellent 5* customer service to zero in 2 years. Tried to make online purchase(s) where they send a security number to your mobile. 3 times online purchases failed as weak signal means no code received and purchases voided, after filling out all the info required. Worse still the same system operates when you need to see/download statements and you cannot get them because no mobile phone signal = no code = no account access. Also it takes over 10 minutes to answer the phone. Other banks offer email security codes as well as text, so things run smoothly. This firm has gone from great to junk, thinking now of shutting account. p.s. we have a joint account and until I asked for paperless statements they were sending 2 lots of statements out, one for me and one for my wife...same account! how's that for eco friendly

I always had reasonable service from Cater Allen and the old internet banking facility was basic, but it worked. I stuck with them because it seemed easier than switching.

The new internet banking upgrade, however is the stuff of user experience nightmares - badly organised with truly stupid design decisions like NOT allowing you to copy-and-paste from the pages (and I could almost guarantee that decision was taken on the basis of "security", that or some vague notion of defeating screen scrapers). Straw, meet the camels back.

New business account (easily) opened at Starling, payments moved across (manually - Cater Allen is not on CASS it appears!). Nuff said.

The "new" online banking is awful. It's actually hard to understand how they could have botched this up any worse. I have been a customer for 5 years and while I was previously frustrated with the archaic payment processing times and 1990's-era online banking experience, at least it was reliable.

I put off moving to Starling when they announced the new online banking was coming, but now that it is here I'm definitely moving to Starling as soon as possible.

Shocking website. Impossible to gain access using credentials I know to be correct. Error messages thrown which are not 'translated' into understandable context.

Thank goodness there is only one final transaction I have to do - empty my account and close it.

I am in agreement with the frustration experienced by other customers of the downgrade of their website in October 2020.
I would like to recommend that they have a key-card system which some banks use. The mobile telephone system is not safe.
As a temporary measure they should increase the time allowed for customers to enter data. The short time allocated is discriminating against older people.
Security is an issue, but some measures used in the IT industry generally are analogous to a builder bricking up the doors and windows of a house to keep it safe from burglars.

Glad it's not just me. Reading the other reviews has reassured me that the new website is awful. It's unusable. It can take many attempts before it lets me in. When I did get in this evening (after entering exactly the same details), I then attempted to transfer some money. It asks for the OTP which I provided. It then asks for authorisation for my location settings (why?) locks up the session and when I'm taken back to the front screen to it locks my account so I'll have to call in the morning to resolve.

Absolutely shambolic. It's supposed to be an upgrade but it's anything but. I can't go through so many hoops when I wish to access my money so I suspect I'll be looking at moving my account. What a shame. I've never had an issue before in the 14 years Ive banked with CaterAllen.

Incredibly outdated website, with even the latest version (today) having poor usability and very limited functionality. The standing orders section of the websote doesnt show transactions before the 'upgrade' and the menu system itself is very unfriendly. I'll be moving away to another provider now.

Cater Allen have a technology problem. They don't understand it. Somehow, even in 2020 they have failed to listen to feedback, failed to learn any lessons and failed to employ anyone with the slightest clue about how to use technology effectively.

That said they are a functional bank and have not made any mistakes with my finances as far as I know.

But even with their latest website redesign in October 2020, they have made some terrible blunders. A few of the most obvious:
(1) They limit your maximum password length to 20 characters. That's not very secure guys, and there is no good reason for it.
(2) They require you to have these characters in your password: Uppercase, lowercase, number and special character, making it difficult to remember and type. This is purely due to their ignorance, and does not improve security.
(3) When entering your password, they have not made sure LastPass (a popular password manager) works, it simply cannot be used to manage your new Cater Allen password. To add insult to injury, you cannot paste from your clipboard into the password field, they have specifically disabled that feature. This is misguided, as it results in forcing people to use less secure passwords.
(4) Every money amount in my list of transactions has the text "GBP" before it (no pound sign either). How rubbish.

Let me be clear, all of these points are common errors when designing an online system, and all of them can be avoided by a minimum amount of user testing, feedback sessions or even just employing someone who knows what they are doing.

Source: I have professionally designed online systems for over 15 years.

UPDATE: I would like to address "simonblonde" comments in another review below...

a) simonblonde states "Yes the login is time consuming, but that is a necessary evil in this cyber world".

It's not the login that is time consuming, it's the entire process of attempting to do anything at all with the bank account! It's incredibly poorly designed.

b) simonblonde states "you don't need an app.......just bookmark the Homepage onto your phones Homescreen, and hey presto! You're in".

Incorrect, that gets you to the login webpage where you would have to enter your password, etc. Most other modern banking apps have biometric login, meaning you only have to touch the fingerprint reader or look at the screen to securely gain access. No need to remember passwords, or write them down, etc.

The bank’s charges are low which reflect the services they provide. Yes, it’s all pretty old fashioned but frankly that’s all I want from a bank. I don’t want a more fancy web service and I don’t want to be sold additional banking products. Their customer service operatives (call Center) are always polite, security conscious and ultimately helpful. Shame to see so many bad reviews from people who want more but pay less.

I've been a customer for over 10 years and, sadly, have nothing positive to say about this dreadful bank.

To summarise, banking with Cater Allen is painful, frustrating and a complete waste of your time and energy.

The technology is hilariously outdated. Their new banking system, launched this morning (12th October 2020) is even worse than before.

Avoid Cater Allen at all costs.

I have been a customer for 20 years. For the past 18 months the Cater Allen IT systems have broken - you can no longer sync software like Sage and Quickbooks with the Cater Allen online systems. Their "open Banking" launch is a disaster and they have not fixed it for so long. In the meantime the sync feature has been switched off the old system. This is incompetence. It has never been the same since Santander dictated the IT systems.

So glad I made the change to Starling Bank. I changed banks when they switched platforms and the system lost my scheduled payments, then I had to set all of them up again manually. Until I changed banks I did not realise how many features of business banking I was missing out on! Cater Allen is business banking stuck in the early 2000's.

I'm seriously considering moving my business from this bank now. I'm tired of the outdated website, issues with logging in and the considerable delay when having to request a password change (via post). The new website that was promised last month has failed to materialise and this is looking like an organisation that is being left behind by the others like Starling. Simply not good enough. I cant see me being with them next year.

I've been with Cater Allen for 15 years. I used to be very happy and liked their online banking experience. However. Last September (2019) something changed. I know this because some months later I was contacted by a Utility saying that I was failing to make payments. I looked at the standing order and instead of the reference being my Account Number. Inexplicably it had changed to "No reference45". I back-tracked to last Sept and could see that the reference changed that month.
I called them and asked how that happened. Turns out there was a major systems changeover then and my reference got altered.
I've recently just been online to make a transfer between my business account and my personal account. Previously that was easy. But this time I've had to go set up the "payee" fresh as if I'm paying a new external person.
Crazy.
Oh. The website is cheap and ill thought out. Seriously. It's a backward step. Counter intuitive. Annoying and quite frankly feels cheap.
I'm struggling to see the point of Cater Allen. It doesn't seem to offer anything over a high street bank. In fact it feels worse.

It took 14 months, 3 application forms (because they delivered the wrong form to my house twice) and 3 phone calls to the bank to chase them up, where only to discover that there was yet another problem with the application form. This happened on all 3 occasions and only when I phoned the bank on my accord, which I also corrected repeatedly on all 3 phone calls.
Would I feel comfortable letting this operation hold millions of pounds of my money? No. I'll be switching my account as soon as I can.