# Bank offering me a free financial review



## christopher.... (11 Feb 2020)

I received a call to go into the bank for a FREE full financial review. At the start of the conversation, it was about my mortgage protection. I said that I reviewed it myself and the repayments did not change. It then changed to a full financial review!

I am a tracker mortgage customer who was affected and currently owns said property. I received a settlement package which I accepted and cashed. There were other mitigating circumstances but I decided against persuing these. 

When I asked to go to another branch or another county they said no. Really peculiar phone call. 

I have no arrears since the middle of the crash. No loans of any kind. Repayments up to date. My savings are with a couple of different banks. 

Do you know what is going on? Do I go in? Worried.com


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## NoRegretsCoyote (11 Feb 2020)

They are probably just trying to sell you a product.

A bank can't force you to come in or do anything . Just ignore it.


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## RedOnion (11 Feb 2020)

NoRegretsCoyote said:


> They are probably just trying to sell you a product.


Exactly this.


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## Brendan Burgess (11 Feb 2020)

christopher.... said:


> I received a call to go into the bank for a FREE full financial review.



It's very common for salespeople in banks to chase people with money in an effort to sell them more products.

Nothing odd.

The salesperson has targets. These won't be met by you going into meet someone else in a different branch.

Brendan


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## NoRegretsCoyote (11 Feb 2020)

The only people I've known to receive these calls are people with five-figure amounts of cash left in current accounts for long periods.


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## Monbretia (11 Feb 2020)

Purely a sales technique, don't need to have lots of money in there either to be offered one as it's a way of checking if maybe you have money elsewhere too, they will have done a bit of checking on your banking habits/current account etc and will have identified that you might be a good bet for a product sale for whatever reason, in your case it's probably the settlement you got.   Usually when you go in they go through a big long questionnaire to identify what you have and where in the hope of identifying some product or other they can offer you.

Nothing unusual in it at all, as Brendan says the staff have targets, targets of appointments to be made for reviews and then the person you meet has targets of sales from reviews done and no benefit at all to either person if you go to a different branch.


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## odyssey06 (11 Feb 2020)

christopher.... said:


> I received a call to go into the bank for a FREE full financial review. At the start of the conversation, it was about my mortgage protection. I said that I reviewed it myself and the repayments did not change. It then changed to a full financial review!



Quick way to put a stop to these calls is to ask the caller to prove they are from the bank before you confirm who you are ... they won't be able to over the phone. Ask them for a callback number and bin it.


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## RedOnion (11 Feb 2020)

odyssey06 said:


> Quick way to put a stop to these calls


Alternatively, ask them to remove your consent to marketing under GDPR. Then they stop completely.


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## Steven Barrett (11 Feb 2020)

There is no such thing as a free financial review. The sole purpose of this exercise is to identify gaps in the financial products you have or have not got and sell you a commission based product. They are not carrying out the review in your best interests, they are carrying it out in their own i.e their sales target. 

If you want a financial review (there is nothing to suggest you do as this was an unsolicited call), pay for it. That way the advisor doesn't have to sell you something to get paid and you may even be told "just keep doing what you are doing and you'll be fine". 


Steven
www.bluewaterfp.ie


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## christopher.... (11 Feb 2020)

Thank you for all your advice and I appreciate it.

Rang the number back to check if it was a scam. It was the life insurance company that the mortgage protection is with and not the said bank.

The person on the phone was able to tell me that I had two policies with the bank which is not true as the other policy is for a different bank. 

I used the settlement to help a family member out with their mortgage and ended up on it. The mortgage is small and will be paid off soon. Not much risk and I can look after it if it turns bad. I do not want it to affect my tracker rate on my property. 

I am not well off but live within my means. I spread the savings to other banks because of the crash and to limit the control that said bank had over me.  I cannot afford another product.
Thank you for the advise.


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## Marsha25 (11 Feb 2020)

Unless you want to go in and be bombarded with information on credit cards, life insurance, savings accounts etc, Id give it a miss. I worked in a bank some years ago and we had to ring around customers to invite them in for a review. I hated doing it as I knew it was only annoying people, but we had targets to achieve.


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