Ulster Bank ; imposing current account rules

[Gordon Gekko]

I just received something interesting in the post...

We're with Ulster Bank on their 3.0% rate on condition that we operate an Ulster Bank current account.

The mortgage broker advised us that UB don't check the actual account, so we opened it and seeded it with a few hundred Euro. We were told that they just check for the existence of a current account at drawdown and then apply the lower rate.

Today's four page document states that following an investigation we have been found to be in breach of the following condition "XXXXXXX" and gives us 60 days to regularise things. The charge is that we either do not have an account (untrue) or that we have an account but don't mandate our main income into it (true).

If we don't do it, we'll revert to SVR (4.3%).

 

[Palerider]

Ignore the broker, your contract is with the Bank, check the conditions in your facility letter and adhere to the conditions of drawdown, that was what you agreed to after all.

 

[Gordon Gekko]

Ignore the broker, your contract is with the Bank, check the conditions in your facility letter and adhere to the conditions of drawdown, that was what you agreed to after all.

That's extraordinarily helpful, thanks.

I'm sharing the story as it might be relevant for others.

 

[RedOnion]

To be fair to the broker, to the best of my knowledge UB only changed their rule about mandated salary accounts in August 2016. Prior to that, all you needed was an account.

Your post serves a good notice particularly to anyone who drew down prior to the rule change, and then changed to the newer loyalty rates, as they might not have seen the rule change.

Their systems are shocking, so it's probably just a periodic check they run. I suspect not having the DD coming from a UB account is probably a red flag if there's any element of manual review required.

 

[Gordon Gekko]

It'll just be a minor inconvenience...I'll either get paid into the UB account or transfer an odd amount to the account with my employer's name as the reference. Then I'll just send the money back to my "real" current account.