RaboDirect Ireland will be closing in May

Gordon Gekko said:
Less competition and more dominance for the Irish banks can’t be good for the customer.
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Absolutely agree.

It will be interesting to see if any of our newspapers report on the fact that both Nationwide UK and RaboDirect told the Department of Finance that their methodology for calculating the bank levy was jeopardising their operations here.

I'm not holding my breath...
 
Sarenco said:
It will be interesting to see if any of our newspapers report on the fact that both Nationwide UK and RaboDirect told the Department of Finance that their methodology for calculating the bank levy was jeopardising their operations here.
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I'm in shock. :eek: Would KBC be next after all the efforts they are doing on advertising???:(
 
delfio said:
God be with the days when they were paying 5% interest on savings, don't think we will ever see those rates again.
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When I was moving house a few years ago I found a letter from Anglo, from back in 2008. They were paying 8%!
 
lollipop said:
Just wondering if anyone has got the letter from Rabodirect on this? It says they have begun notifying customers. Will there be any charges to withdraw your savings? Wondering who to go to also!
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Got a letter yesterday.
 
I just closed my account. I'd forgotten my customer number and could find no record of it, so I spent 15+ minutes on hold when I phoned then to find out.
I knew that I'd almost nothing in the account but wasn't sure exactly how little.
€0.01

Anyway, as someone previously mentioned, just click on Account Closure and it's straightforward.

I think that was the third saving account I had with them. Wasn't there a €20 sign up bonus back in the day, for first time customers? Then there was a €20 Irish Times sign up bonus, even for non first time customers. I think on the third occasion I was attracted by their interest rates; there was no bonus.

Can't remember when I opened that first account but it seems I had used my hotmail email rather than my gmail, so I'm guessing it was 2004. 14 years, farewell RaboDirect.
 
CiaranT said:
That's huge news.

RaboDirect join a long list of deposit taker brand exits since the crisis:
Northern Rock
Irish Nationwide
Anglo Irish Bank
First Active
Nationwide UK (Ireland)
Halifax / Bank of Scotland (Ireland)
Danske Bank
Leeds Building Society (Ireland)
ICS
PostBank
Raisin (Opened EU wide and then exited 2 EU countries including Ireland)

Plus Investec Ireland are apparently about to be acquired by AIB.

90,000 savers finding new homes is huge. Big opportunity for KBC to try to get their hands on the customers.
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Wow, that's some list. ICS, PostBank and Raisin are the only ones that I haven't had an account with. I was a rate tart back in the day!
 
Tossing up between KBC and AIB - can't help feeling I might be here again in a couple of years if I go with KBC - the foreign banks seem to be being driven out of the market :( Diversification is more of a priority over rate for me - hence sticking with Rabo until now. Sad to see them go :(
 
Actually I am starting to believe this is another effect of the big crisis of 10 years ago: unless a Bank diversifies a lot the offerings it's hard that money will stay into accounts at such low interests for too long. We could see that Stock Exchanges capitalisations surged in the last few years also because banks are not considered anymore such safe heavens for liquid money. The change on behaviours of the crisis of 10 years ago is really evident in my opinion...:eek: I found it symbolic that when I opened a new regular saver's account with PTSB they asked me to sign the "awareness form" on the 100K Eur guarantee again...:(

Also their dutch competitors Degiro came to Ireland with such low fees... It's hard even for small savers like me not to resist the temptation of trying to follow Warren Buffett's steps nowadays.o_O Or am I missing something?:confused:
 
KBC have started an advertising campaign encouraging RaboDirect savers to move. KBC are clearly trying to capitalise on the fact that 90,000 savers are looking for a new home.
 
Drakon said:
When I was moving house a few years ago I found a letter from Anglo, from back in 2008. They were paying 8%!
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my mother had a sizeable sum with anglo around that time , im pretty sure it was 5% tops ?

could be mistaken however , i know she had money in some post office savings scheme as well at the time of the IMF bailout which returned close to 4%
 
I think I remember getting 7% on Irish Nationwide. I know Brendan thinks that the likes of me should not have been bailed out. That might have been a bit of breach of faith on the part of the State, after all they were telling me that they were regulating IN. What should have happened and what would have been fair would have been to pass legislation which clawed back all "super interest " on bailed out deposits.
 
I recently closed an account with ABN Amro in Schiphol, which I had been able to open without visiting the Netherlands. My reason for closure was the dreadful interest rates, but if people are looking for a bank with good credit rating they might be interested. I found the bank easy to deal with.
 
CiaranT said:
KBC have started an advertising campaign encouraging RaboDirect savers to move. KBC are clearly trying to capitalise on the fact that 90,000 savers are looking for a new home.
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Interesting - are they pushing any particular product? The 35 day notice looks the best rate but it's variable so I can't help thinking they might drop the rate in a couple of months.
 
gravitygirl said:
Interesting - are they pushing any particular product? The 35 day notice looks the best rate but it's variable so I can't help thinking they might drop the rate in a couple of months.
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KBC are simply pushing the fact that they have "competitive rates" and encouraging people to switch now rather than May.

Yeah, a good guess would be that the 35 day notice rate will decline in the near future. It is paying way above the variable lump sum market.
 
Do all these bank withdrawals from the Irish banking market say anything about our economy?

Are they simply a reflection of the difficulty of competing in this tiny market, or are they an indication of something more?

D.
 
Dinarius said:
Are they simply a reflection of the difficulty of competing in this tiny market, or are they an indication of something more?
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Well, in my humble opinion, it's in no small part a reflection of the Government's policy to drive competition out of the deposit market -
Sarenco said:
More importantly, it now seems clear to me that the Government's deliberate attempt to reduce competition in the deposit market (to favour the State owned domestic banks) has been successful.
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