Students are planning to protest outside the London headquarters of HSBC next week after the bank removed a fee-free period from graduates’ overdrafts.

The National Union of Students’ (NUS) campaign, which started online on Facebook, the social networking site, with a group called “Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off!!!”, comes as banks line up to recruit hundreds of thousands of new student customers at “freshers” fairs.

Banks are keen to sign up students because most stay with the same bank when they graduate and become professionals. Thus all the leading players offer them fee-free overdrafts.

However, last month HSBC wrote to its student customers informing them that it planned to introduce a 9.9 per cent interest charge on overdrafts for graduates from August 8. Previously, students banking with HSBC had been offered fee-free overdrafts of £1,500 in their first year after graduation, reduced to £1,000 in the second year and £500 the year after that.

Wes Streeting, vice-president of the NUS, said: “It is outrageous to impose major changes to the account after very little notice. Many students will have been sitting there with big overdrafts thinking they would be fee-free and now they are going to get whacked.”

More than 2,700 students have signed up to the Facebook protest group that Mr Streeting started a month ago, with many saying that they plan to switch their accounts to a rival bank.

In a comment typical of hundreds posted on the Facebook site, Sarah Buck, a student at Nottingham Trent University, wrote: “No way I’m paying interest to HSBC when its free at Natwest – move there!!”

Samantha Woodhead, from Durham, wrote: “I was told in June by a member of staff for HSBC that they would phase me off the overdraft over three years, can’t believe they’re just completely changing their tune!”

HSBC, which has several thousand customers with graduate accounts, said yesterday that it had no plans to pull its new charges as a result of the protest and a spokesman said that its student account was “one of the most competitive on the high street”.

The bank has offered to meet representatives from the NUS at the end of Setpember.

Mr Streeting said that the NUS would be raising awareness among students that HSBC would introduce charges on any overdrafts when they graduated, unlike Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB.

“This is a lucrative and competitive market,” he said. “Every year the major banks are jockeying for position at the freshers fairs with a dazzling array of gimmicks and accounts on offer. Students are spoilt for choice.”

The HSBC spokesman said that graduates were choosing not to pay off their debt for some time. “The idea behind the interest rate was to get them to bring their debt right down now rather than leaving it to their early or even late 20s.” he said.

The spokesman added that HSBC’s new terms for graduates were a stepping stone from the free overdrafts offered to students to the 18 per cent paid by working adults.