I’ve been spending some time looking into the banks in South Africa, primarily FNB, Standard, ABSA and Nedbank to find out which bank is actually the best to go with. Does it boil down to interest rates, bank charges or service?
Personally, I’m a big FNB fan, I started out using Standard Bank, but soon converted to FNB and have not had a single problem since. The only time I ever have a problem is when I deposit Google Adsense cheques!
After the whole PayPal debate, Mr CheapTrip and I figured it would be great to hear what bank everyone uses and why they use the bank of their choice?
I took a while to have a read on each banks website, but without digging really deep, it’s tricky to pull out extremely comparative information. After spending some time reading, I decided that this wasn’t meant to be a big research task, but rather a post to prompt people to start a conversation, so let’s chat!
I use South African Bank Of Athens, It is big enough to get stuff done, but small enough to care. Excellent client service, and wealth management.
I’ve had my personal ABSA account for 16 years already, and no problems so far, also as I worked for them as a student.
My home loan is with STD, and they seem to have made a major facelift on the branding side, but still making up my mind.
Nedbank – phew, now they have the worst Inet banking site EVER! Service is not that gr8, I’m using it for one of my business accounts, can’t even bank my overseas cheques effeciently, takes one a whole afternoon just to cash the chq.
Thats my experiences….next?
I can’t say “I like ABSA” but that’s were I am, and what I do enjoy is this action line thing of theirs where you can go whine if something goes wrong – if someone messes you around and you take it to action line I have reason to believe that the employee actually gets fined on their salary (a friend of mine used to work there and told me about it)…I think that is a great customer service incentive. ;-)
Interesting, I really hope a good number of people come along and comment, I’m very curious to know which bank is the bank of choice to us South Africans!
ABSA!!!
Quick efficient service, they have ONE branch code to make life simple, staff at the branches are well trained and polite, never had a problem.
BUT…they hire the DUMBEST call centre agents possible! Im pretty sure they give IQ tests and their HR dept is convinced the lower your score the better you are!
I’ve heard good things about ABSA and FNB my whole life. The FNB call agents are extremely efficient, not nearly as efficient as Virgin, but efficient enough for my liking.
‘lower the score, the better you are’.. rofl!
I started of with Barclays Bank as a child and now with FNB. 40 years. Ooops I just gave my age away. Even with Barclays in UK. Zero bankcost in UK.
Haha Rustig, age is just a number mate :)
Barclays, ah ye, I remember my folks used to use Barclays, I think I’m a little young to know enough about them :)
Zero bank charges.. dream come true!
Hello Chris
GO check out http://www.thinkmoney.co.za.
u can use their calculators to work out which banking product is cheapest for you based on your profile (eg, how many withdrawals, deposits, debit orders, etc, etc you make per year. It even takes into consideration your balance and therefore interest owed or earned).
they compare all the credit card and banking accounts available in SA; you will be surprised at how many offerings there are.
if you are not driven by cost, but instead prefer service, read though the reviews that their users have written.
thanks
G
That’s a cool link Gareth, thanks for the information. I can see this website coming in very handy if it stands up to the great name you’ve given it!
Whenever i try and deposit a foreign cheque at Nedbank they treat me like i’m some kind of money launderer. The concept of global commerce is totally lost on them.
Yes, South Africans are so ignorant, they see foreign money and they freak out, it’s whack!