Free money, £100s free insurance and more - all from switching bank accounts!
The Martin Lewis Podcast
BBC
4.4 • 929 Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2026
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Martin on switching your bank account and which banks are willing to pay you money to do so. He also explains package bank accounts where you pay a monthly fee and can get things like travel insurance, mobile cover and breakdown cover included. Right now you can get nearly a year of that for free too.
He explains changes to energy standing charges.... and the new broadband and mobile telecom charter, which was signed yesterday. Martin gives his view on whether it's any good and whether it will it stop price hikes.
The Tell Us is all about work-life balance and there are lots of tips for you about home insurance in this week's Mastermind.
If you want to ask Martin a question, you now can! His Question Time podcast lets you ask Martin absolutely anything and everything (within reason!) – so if you’ve always wanted to know what colour his eyes are, what he's planning to do in his eventual retirement, or have a very complicated question about your personal finances, email it to MartinLewisPodcast@bbc.co.uk.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | It is an improvement. I'm not sure how you put that in practice, but it's a good way to think about it. |
| 0:12.7 | Did you understand that? I think I may have made it too complex. I did understand it. |
| 0:16.1 | They are tightening up the rules of how often you get switch bonuses now. I think it's more totemic |
| 0:20.4 | than real, but hopefully as the tot I think it's more totemic than |
| 0:20.8 | real, but hopefully as a totem, it's a good one. |
| 0:22.8 | As long as you're amusing yourself, Martin, that's the main thing. |
| 0:28.1 | Hello, I'm Martin Lewis, and this is the cunningly named the Martin Lewis podcast. |
| 0:34.1 | I do wonder what that's going to be about. Now, usually much of it comes from my BBC Radio 5 live show with Adrian Childs, but there's |
| 0:40.3 | also lots of bonus money saving tips just for you lucky, lucky podcast listeners. |
| 0:46.3 | In today's part, free cash and hundreds of pounds of free insurance, all from switching |
| 0:52.3 | your bank account. Yes, banks are willing to pay you money |
| 0:56.1 | to switch to them. I'll be going through all the details of that. And there are package bank accounts |
| 1:01.3 | where you pay a monthly fee and get travel insurance, mobile phone cover and breakdown cover as a part of it. |
| 1:06.5 | And right now, they're paying you to switch to them too, which effectively means you can get |
| 1:10.7 | nearly a year of that for free as well. |
| 1:13.5 | Then there's a chink of light on energy standing charges. |
| 1:17.5 | They're sort of maybe in a way going to be reduced. |
| 1:20.0 | We'll discuss that. |
| 1:21.0 | This week we saw the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Science and Technology sign with telecoms companies a new charter for broadband and mobile. |
| 1:29.2 | Is it any good and will it stop the price hikes? |
| 1:32.6 | This week's tell us is all about your work-life balance and how you manage it. |
... |
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