First Active ceasing sales of S&I

B

Bobby1

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From the 31st August First Active will no longer sell any savings or investment savings products, current accounts as the get ready to merge with Ulster Bank.

I have an account with them that matures in September and they told me that if I want to re-invest my funds I can do so, but under the Ulster Bank product range- meaning I will be moving to another insitution as UB offerings are so poor.

Might be a bit of competition in the months ahead between banks as there will be a lot of first active money floating around me thinks!

[broken link removed]
 
Interesting. So August 31st is the key date for the end of the FA savings and current account products.

No mention of the date for the branch closures on this list.
 
I have an esavings account with them - does this mean that this will be closed and I will have to open an ulster bank equivalent
 
sue_flaherty said:
I have an esavings account with them - does this mean that this will be closed and I will have to open an ulster bank equivalent
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I'd imagine the account will change from held with FA to UB, no need to close an open I would say.
 

I had an account maturing with them last month. The official I was dealing with seemed quite happy to close off the account and issue me with a cheque. No effort was made whatsoever to hold on to the funds, cross sell me another product, absolutely nothing. In fact the whole transaction was done in silence. I even prompted the person to make an effort....nothing.
I would imagine that First Active are losing funds hand over fist at the moment with this couldn't care less attitude.
I agree with the observations on Ulster Banks products...pretty dire for the investor.
 
The FA staff attitude may have something to do with the fact that a lot of them will loose their job shortly.

TonyD said:
I'd imagine the account will change from held with FA to UB, no need to close an open I would say.
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Exactly, from August 31st 2009, your FA account becomes and UB account, no need to do anything.
 
Fungus is right, bit hard to be enthusiastic when lots of staff have already left, offices are seriously short staffed and all that are left are the ones who are going within the next month or so and those who couldnt afford to go. yes yes I know they should be thankful to have a job but nevertheless it is a stressful situation.
 

To think that these started off as a Mutual Building Society. Look at them now. Sold on to the highest bidder, milked, then dumped. The staff did not deserve this.
 
Most of the offices are closing in October, a small number of them are remaining open but will be rebranded as Ulster Bank branches with full UB branch offerings and a number of UB branches are also closing and being moved into the larger existing FA offices, which will then be rebranded as UB

UB and FA are not merging their systems until q1 next year, in the short term, a FA counter/desk will be set up in the nearest UB branch to service FA customers

About time this was done, it made little business sense to have the same company offering competing products under different brand names a few doors apart.

Majority of staff in FA branches have been made redundant, on the one hand i have sympathy for them, on the other they are getting 8 weeks per year of service plus retraining grants,
 
I konw Ulster Bank is the bigger of the two (UB & FA) but in my view I would consider First Active to be a much stronger brand for savings and investments then I would ever thought of Ulster Bank,

I wonder will they keep the brand name First Active alive as an on-line provider or just do awy with the whole thing?

The are obviously not worried about losing a chunk of their FA deposit base as from the sound of BoxTheFox they are going to.
 

The FA brand is being done away with completely. If they have no interest in mortgage lending (as UB seem to have largely ceased mortgage lending), then they may have little interest in paying high rates on deposits. Even if they have kept it open, I would have thoughts that realistically, FA would have cut their rates going forward in line with the other banks.
 
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