Make your savings safe

safer than others? Of course. Are savers’ deposits with some of these banks more comprehensively protected than with others, in the event of a collapse? Without doubt.

What Financial Mail has consistently pointed to throughout the various phases of this financial crisis are the basic categories into which the many deposit-taking institutions fall.

The first category – and arguably the safest of all homes for your money – comprises the British institutions backed by our Government.

This means National Savings & Investments, and since they have already been rescued, Lloyds Banking Group and Rbs/natwest.

Next come the many institutions that are fully authorised and protected in Britain but not Government-owned.

This embraces all building societies and the majority of banks, including many foreign-owned banks with fully authorised British divisions such as Santander, Bank of Ireland and several Indian banks.

In the third category are the institutions that are not fully authorised here and so do not subscribe to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (our home-grown safety net).

This category includes ING and

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Bank of Cyprus, which belong to European compensation schemes. It also includes a number of Channel Island institutions, which are covered by their own, offshore schemes.

In the pre-crisis days, none of this mattered. Savers’ choices were dictated almost exclusively by rates of return.

Today, in the thick of the crisis, savers are expected to weigh the chances, however remote, of disaster. It is an impossible ask.

But there is something savers can do – arm themselves with information, understand the depositor protection that applies to their accounts and stick within the relevant limits.

As ever, Financial Mail is here to help.