Always friendly, always get to speak to a real person. They’re open 24 hours, and have done silly things for me like arranged car loans at 3am while I lived in California and 3am UK time was a good time for me to call from where I was. They’ve offered (without me having to ask) to call me back when I’ve called them from abroad, in order to save me the cost of a call. They have coped admirably with my sometimes slightly bizarre banking needs, and gave us a competetive mortgage too. Much better than the useless bunch at Barclays I used to be with, who didn’t want to know about anything.

Hero rating: 8/10