KBC exiting Ireland

The J Stands for Jay

listermint wrote: »

Yeah the chase for Free Fee's isnt sustainable and people jumping all their current accounts to the next fad business talking about free fees cant work. It costs alot of money to keep your current account for a bank. They have to make it back from somewhere. People dont seem to think about that ever.

I don't care about what it costs them. If someone wants to throw shareholder funds at market share by giving me free banking, I'm not going to turn it down because it's not a sustainable business. It's easy enough to switch banks. Why pay for banking until I have to.

(I do pay for a non-Irish bank account now, but only because the features it offers are worth the cost to me. I have a joint account for bills etc with KBC. I don't feel the need to pay for that basic service while I can get away with it).

Dempo1

[Deleted User] wrote: »

You're a jinx

Did they miss, POST BANK, DANSK, NIB?

JTMan

Gael23 wrote: »

What do you mean by returned?

Depositors might be told to transfer their deposits by X date to another bank or you will get a cheque in the post with the amount.

cooperguy

berocca2016 wrote: »

You're wrong!!! Stop paraphrasing bonkers.ie as a source!

As per revolut "A few weeks ago, we let you know that we would move our EU Revolut customers to our European entity in Lithuania (“Revolut Payments UAB”). Today we have officially made the switch".

Also from Revolut " If you are registered to the Revolut Bank UAB and Revolut Payments UAB entity:

Almost all deposits with Revolut Bank UAB are insured by the Lithuanian State Company “Deposit and Investment Insurance” (VĮ “Indėlių ir investicijų draudimas”). This means that if an insured deposit is not returned as a result of an inability of Revolut Bank UAB to fulfil its financial obligations, the Lithuanian State Company “Deposit and Investment Insurance” shall pay the deposit insurance compensation for deposits to the depositors. The maximum amount of insurance compensation for deposits with Revolut Bank UAB for a single depositor is EUR 100,000. The amount of deposit insurance compensation is determined by aggregating all the deposits held with Revolut Bank UAB. Please note that certain deposits are not insured. More details regarding deposit insurance are available here."

You're just paraphrasing Revolut! If you check your app you will see you are registered to Revolut Payments UAB not the bank and as they say in the rest of the page you paraphrased:

If you are registered to the Revolut Payments UAB entity:

As an electronic money institution, we are required to "safeguard" clients funds.

Safeguarding" means separating clients funds from our own funds and holding them in a separate account with a credit institution. The funds in this segregated account are held by us on your behalf. As an authorised institution, Revolut safeguards your funds as per regulatory requirements.

The J Stands for Jay

Dempo1 wrote: »

Did they miss, POST BANK, DANSK, NIB?

Post bank was never attractive, and I considered danske bank, but at that stage Halifax were paying something like 10% interest on current account balances.

10000maniacs

Dempo1 wrote: »

Did they miss, POST BANK, DANSK, NIB?

We'll be banking with our post office savings books in a few years. Mark my words.

Eire Go Brach

listermint wrote: »

Yeah the chase for Free Fee's isnt sustainable and people jumping all their current accounts to the next fad business talking about free fees cant work. It costs alot of money to keep your current account for a bank. They have to make it back from somewhere. People dont seem to think about that ever.

Don't care either. The thought of giving Irish banks or banks in general more money than I have to wrecks my head. Considering the damage they and Fianna Failure done to our country with their greed.
I would Bank surf to save a €5

Henry Ford III

cooperguy wrote: »

You're just paraphrasing Revolut! If you check your app you will see you are registered to Revolut Payments UAB not the bank and as they say in the rest of the page you paraphrased:

If you are registered to the Revolut Payments UAB entity:

As an electronic money institution, we are required to "safeguard" clients funds.

Safeguarding" means separating clients funds from our own funds and holding them in a separate account with a credit institution. The funds in this segregated account are held by us on your behalf. As an authorised institution, Revolut safeguards your funds as per regulatory requirements.

There's a dedicated Revolut thread elsewhere. I already asked everybody to stay on topic.

sebdavis

listermint wrote: »

Yeah the chase for Free Fee's isnt sustainable and people jumping all their current accounts to the next fad business talking about free fees cant work. It costs alot of money to keep your current account for a bank. They have to make it back from somewhere. People dont seem to think about that ever.

This cost's a lot of money for the Bank
https://www.fintechfutures.com/2019/03/fears-over-bank-of-ireland-e2bn-tech-revamp-cost/

A project which started at 900m and is well past 1.4billion and still burning money

chaikhosi

L1011 wrote: »

KBC only started advertising investment services heavily in the past week or so, so this 'may remain as a retail bank and insurance broker' idea is actually plausible. Though considering there is no money in current account banking, it'd clearly be mad.

Would it be so mad if they closed all the branches though, and just kept up a web and app service? The same level of service as N26 but with more products like overdrafts and credit cards, which are presumably profitable in their own right.


KBC branches are already cash-free, and back home in Belgium cheques were scrapped by all the banks 20 years ago. Sure they must be keen on doing the same here.

Fozzie Bear

Can’t believe this news. We had just finished the process of setting up our new accounts with KBC this week. Just waiting on the cards to be posted out.

Moving from Ulster Bank! Thank God we hadn’t started moving over standing orders, wages etc yet.

We were going to move our mortgage too from BoI to KBC.

Such a pain in the balls

sebdavis

chaikhosi wrote: »

Would it be so mad if they closed all the branches though, and just kept up a web and app service? The same level of service as N26 but with more products like overdrafts and credit cards, which are presumably profitable in their own right.


KBC branches are already cash-free, and back home in Belgium cheques were scrapped by all the banks 20 years ago. Sure they must be keen on doing the same here.

I never used KBC as a bank, everything was online. In the rare occasion I got a cheque I lodged into Credit union

Sam the Sham

sebdavis wrote: »

This cost's a lot of money for the Bank
https://www.fintechfutures.com/2019/03/fears-over-bank-of-ireland-e2bn-tech-revamp-cost/

A project which started at 900m and is well past 1.4billion and still burning money

And the new customer-facing services (the app) are 10 years out of date even if they just launched a few months ago. Still have to log in using a passcode and app design looks antiquated.

chaikhosi

Sam W wrote: »

I’m thinking to transfer my KBC account to EBS. I know many people said it’s ****e in terms of online banking / contactless before. Is it still the same? Do they have online standing orders / online money transfers? Any catch for zero maintenance fees?

I have EBS and N26. Been thinking about moving to KBC but won't bother now.

EBS is free (except the €5 annual cashcard tax) with no conditions, as long as you only do euro transactions. There's a fee with other currencies. You can make transfers online and get paid just by giving work your iban, but I think standing orders involve a form in the post. But there's no Apple Pay, no overdraft, no credit card, no chequebook, a pretty clunky website, and the phone app is only for 2 factor login to web banking. You can't access your account through it.

Unlike KBC, you can deposit cash at a branch.

N26 is free as well, with a limit of 3 cash withdrawals per month. No branches, no credit of any sort, no cheques, and a German IBAN which can make direct debits hard to set up, but you get Apple Pay, fee-free card payments with a fair exchange rate in any currency anywhere, real-time processing of most types of transaction (no waiting til tomorrow for your balance to update), and a great app that's more stable and reliable than Revolut.

Both EBS and N26 are proper banks covered by the deposit guarantee scheme. For savings accounts I think BOI pays more than either, but there's very little in it.

So if you get paid into EBS and have your direct debits there, transfer the rest to N26 and you will be charge free except for non-euro cash withdrawals.

listermint

Eire Go Brach wrote: »

Don't care either. The thought of giving Irish banks or banks in general more money than I have to wrecks my head. Considering the damage they and Fianna Failure done to our country with their greed.
I would Bank surf to save a €5

You wouldn't though. It's internet talk.

Keano

Fozzie Bear wrote: »

Can’t believe this news. We had just finished the process of setting up our new accounts with KBC this week. Just waiting on the cards to be posted out.

Moving from Ulster Bank! Thank God we hadn’t started moving over standing orders, wages etc yet.

We were going to move our mortgage too from BoI to KBC.

Such a pain in the balls

They will not be going anywhere for a while, I'd still move everything if you are getting a better deal

Rock Steady Edy

You would think a takeover by the BoI should be referred to a Competition Authority which ought to block it on the grounds of competition.

As was mentioned earlier, the interview on RTE breakfast with KBCs CEO suggested BoI had pro-actively made an offer that was hard to refuse when compared with what they could make if they stayed. To me this is a little different to when a bank decides to leave because they realise they have no realistic chance to make a meaningful profit for years to come and as a result make arrangements to transfer their assets and liabilities (as has happened / is happening with a whole string of banks: Halifax, NIB, Rabobank, Leeds, Ulster).


KBC seem to have been trying to shake up banking (in as far as you can) with their PRSA and Tap to Save Apps (which was only launched a couple of weeks ago). I suspect there wasn't much money to in the Tap-to-Save offering though with a minimum of €10 per month and with only one fund to choose from it's probably got limited appeal.

3 banks left is not good for competition. Unfortunately Paschal Donohoe has got an incentive in reducing competition to try and recoup what was handed out to bailout the banks.

jimmycrackcorm

Had to move to KBC from Danske and have a mortgage with Ulster so it's a bit offputting that any bank I go near eventually breaks up with me.

It's not me, it's you.

sebdavis

listermint wrote: »

You wouldn't though. It's internet talk.

The biggest competitor to all "old" Banking like AIB/BOI etc is Fintechs. Plenty of articles explaining why

Plenty of people have no issue moving from one bank to another to reduce fee's. Especially with the new laws around open banking. Trying to say they won't is "internet talk"
The one person who has no issue is the hated millennial. Gone is the day of opening and account with one bank and staying with them for life

Rock Steady Edy

Keano wrote: »

They will not be going anywhere for a while, I'd still move everything if you are getting a better deal

Completely agree. We switched to KBC and their €3k switching incentive paid for all the fees (including about €700 in fixed rate breakage fees) and had around €500 left over and saved €100pm for every month thereafter. Lock yourself into a better deal now, even if it ends up back with BoI.

crossmolinalad

Peterd66 wrote: »

Another bank driven out by Central Bank policy and approach and a warning to any new lenders thinking about entering the market.

Wont use irish banks anymore
Have one bank account using Wise for that

AndrewJRenko

sebdavis wrote: »

This cost's a lot of money for the Bank
https://www.fintechfutures.com/2019/03/fears-over-bank-of-ireland-e2bn-tech-revamp-cost/

A project which started at 900m and is well past 1.4billion and still burning money

And they'll tell you that overruns only happen in the public sector!

Who got fired for that?

Bob24

crossmolinalad wrote: »

Wont use irish banks anymore
Have one bank account using Wise for that

For things like loans and mortgages you might not have a choice.

But yes in terms of daily banking KBC is the only Ireland-based bank I would have gotten close to. I have tried all of them and there is not a chance I’d go to another Irish bank as an alternative to KBC, I’ll just stick to one of the fintechs or a foreign bank.

It is not just the high fees compared to online/foreign alternatives (I actually don’t mind paying for good service as a general rule as I am a firm believer of the idea that if a service is free, you are the product). It is more the fact that their quality of service and use of technology is just crap (BoI probably being the worst offender, if I exclude EBS which is probably even worse but I am not sure is technically a bank).

fritzelly

Was telling my mate to move to KBC (my bank) after UB's decision

We both have N26

Not a chance in the world either of us will go back to AIB or BoI so it looks like N26 and the credit union is the way to go

Kintarō Hattori

I know absolutely nothing about the banking sector folks. I'm not really very finanically minded either (trying to tell you I'm clueless on these matters), why is our banking sector so small? As in, why do we have so few banks and why do they all seem to think they can't make money here and pull out eventually.

AndrewJRenko

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

And they'll tell you that overruns only happen in the public sector!

Who got fired for that?

Who says that? Of course it also happens in the private sector, but its not tax payers money being blown so it happens less often.

Also, gov still have major influence in Irish banks.

The J Stands for Jay

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I know absolutely nothing about the banking sector folks. I'm not really very finanically minded either (trying to tell you I'm clueless on these matters), why is our banking sector so small? As in, why do we have so few banks and why do they all seem to think they can't make money here and pull out eventually.

To make money, you need to have lots of customers. There's a limited amount of new customers, since essentially every adult has a bank account. That means that to get customers, you need to take them from existing banks. The majority of Irish people do not change banks. Someone came into their class from the bank and gave them a moneybox and a savings account. The only change they ever make is to take the mammy's name off the account and convert it to a current account. Having done that for generations with their squirrels or hippos or whatever on their moneyboxes, the big 3 have the market sown up. Any new entrants need to spend a fortune to get market share. It usually doesn't work out.

Sheep Shagger

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

And they'll tell you that overruns only happen in the public sector!

Who got fired for that?

I don't care about cost overruns along as my tax money ism't paying for it. Bank staff including the CEO are accountable to shareholders at the AGM.

BOI is now virtually out of state hands.

GarIT

The state should set up a bank imo.


No Frills, no Fees. Just current accounts and debit cards.

howiya

GarIT wrote: »

The state should set up a bank imo.


No Frills, no Fees. Just current accounts and debit cards.

The state already owns most of AIB and PTSB, the post office and 14% of BOI but yeah it should definitely set up a bank...