It is a good idea to check out different banks when it comes to getting a student loan. Some, like Santander did this year, offer things like rail cards for customers, whereas others might have benefits such as a big overdraft.
I can’t speak of the benefits of different banks because I didn’t go to them (though, looking back now, that rail card from Santander would have come in useful this year), but I can talk about my experience with NatWest.
First of all, they were very, very nice. I was told beforehand that I would need my confirmation letter from UCAS to open a student account, but that turned out to not be necessary because they could go online and see I’d gotten into my uni (I don’t know if this is standard practice, it’s always best to check). As I already had a building society account at the city building society, they offered to move any direct debits coming out of that account to this one (which I declined) and were generally really helpful when I set up the account.
Then it came to moving money into my building society account when the loan (eventually) came through. Again, the people helping me were really friendly and helpful and suggested I set up an easy access savings account to put away some money for the rest of the term. They offered me advice on saving and managing my spending and that really helped for the rest of the year.
NatWest were really friendly and helpful whenever I had to go in branch to speak to them. As I didn’t expect to need things like rail cards or a large overdraft (the overdraft for a NatWest account increases the longer you’re with them I do believe. Again, this is one of the things I’d recommend asking about when getting your account), ease of access and simplicity, as well as having a positive reputation, were what I opted for, and I got that with this bank