Ulster Bank and KBC told they can't close until customers have moved.

A welcome and overdue move that should put the onus back on the banks rather than customers to make this happen.

Not sure that this is a good development.

To attract new bank and lenders into the country, we need to make it easy for them to leave as well.

6 months' notice should be plenty. It's a bit unfortunate that two are leaving at the same time.

It would be better to sit down with the remaining banks to ask them what needs to be done to take on the new customers. And can the Central Bank help e.g. relaxing money laundering requirements to some extent.

Brendan

And what are they actually going to do?. It's almost impossible for the regulator to stop them leaving and given the billions at stake for Ulster, a fine of a few hundred K or even a couple of million has probably already been factored into the business case by Nat West

My wife and I have a joint account with KBC.

After the announcement two weeks ago I decided to get the finger out and set open a new one.

Because we need a joint account, based on what I'd read online and in the media I was expecting it to be a complete pain requiring branch visits at inconvenient times, paper work, phone calls, child care hassle, etc.

We decided to go with BOI because it might be handy viewing our current account and mortgage on the same app (which is a stupid reason).

I went through a load of hassle to escape from BOI a good few years back, and it's really annoying that they've chosen and been permitted, to buy out relatively competent competitors like this, so I was already prepared to get hysterical about the inevitable delays and hassle they were going to cause me.

And of course I had chosen to do this right after the announcement, which was presumably peak time.

It. Was. An. Absolute. Doddle.

As surprisingly, and pleasantly, easy as applying for a passport.

I spent less than ten minutes filling out a very well designed form online. Submitted a photo of my passport and a selfie.

My wife got an email asking her to do the same within about half an hour.

We got a text 36 hours later with our IBAN. I called up immediately to set up on line banking which took about ten minutes. I transfered over fifty quid to make sure it works.

They posted our cards out last week.

I hate Bank of Ireland. (The app somehow even worse than I remembered). But a child could set up an account with them in a few hours.

What on earth is all the fuss about?

Brendan Burgess said:

Not sure that this is a good development.

To attract new bank and lenders into the country, we need to make it easy for them to leave as well.

6 months' notice should be plenty. It's a bit unfortunate that two are leaving at the same time.

It would be better to sit down with the remaining banks to ask them what needs to be done to take on the new customers. And can the Central Bank help e.g. relaxing money laundering requirements to some extent.

Brendan

Click to expand...

I take your point. I suppose it's a question of balancing consumer protection and advocacy against not imposing undue requirements on the banks. IMO we get very little of the former from the Central Bank so that's why I welcome this.

Agree totally with the AML requirements though. It's gone beyond ridiculous at this point.

Having gone through the moving of my credit card from KBC to AIB I do wish it was KBC and Ulster bank staying and AIB and PTSB that were leaving.

Took me just a short 20 min phone call to sort out a double stamp duty charge by KBC talking with a human, versus 3 days of stress with AIB.