Anglo Irish Bank - Smart Simple Savings
I recently opened a 30 day notice deposit account with Anglo Irish Bank. While I have had some bad experiences with other financial institutions in the past, I have to say that I’m extremely impressed with Anglo’s service so far.
Opening accounts with Irish banks generally involves a bit of hassle. I completely understand the need for documentation to counter money laundering etc but it can be a bit of a pain getting everything prepared. However, all I had to do this time was grab my passport, my bank statement and my cheque book and pop in to the branch on St Stephen’s Green anytime between 8am and 8pm. That’s right, I have finally found a bank with decent opening hours! 
What’s more, I was treated very nicely when I did drop by. It’s the little touches that count. Straight away, a member of staff shook my hand, gave me his business card and sat me down in their nice meeting room. I felt like a millionaire! I was not rushed and he answered all my questions. Everything was organised in a few minutes. A few days later I received all of my account details in the post.
Managing my savings account is easy too. I just set up a bill payment from my current account and pay it whenever I want to add to my Anglo savings account. I receive a PDF statement by e-mail whenever any transactions occur and I can also access account statements online at any time. Whenever I want to withdraw, I just make a phone call.
It’s not perfect. To get the best rate of 2.65%, I have to give them 30 days notice of all withdrawals. Although, in my case, that’s no bad thing. I don’t want it to be too easy to break open the piggybank. Also, you need €1000 to open the account which took me a fair while to get together! But it’s great that my hard earned yo-yos are finally earning some decent interest instead of sitting doing nothing in my current account, apart from lining the pockets of my bank manager while they are waiting for me to go handbag shopping of course…
November 3rd, 2005 at 11:28 am
First of all - congrats on being the proud owner of a thousand euro!
I’m always amazed how few banks realise that customers aren’t interested in “normal” opening hours - then again, there’s a huge push to get us all banking online so that we don’t actually come into the branch at all.
The thing that concerns me most about that is the sending of personal financial information by email. Sounds tremendously insecure to me.
November 3rd, 2005 at 12:03 pm
you can choose to get all correspondence by snail mail instead. i had been quite concerned by the e-mail thing at first, but then i thought that the info would not be that valuable on its own and that chances of interception would be pretty low anyway?? i can be very naive and stupid sometimes, but even post has its problems sometimes these days…
thought i was just being paranoid about the e-mail stuff but i think i’ll switch to postal statements just to be sure. thanks daithi!
November 4th, 2005 at 9:00 am
No! Enough with this yo-yos slang. Am I the only person who hates it?
*Deep breath* 8pm closing = genius move.
Not sure is snail mail is any more secure. My flatmate had her cheques stolen from the post. Couple of grand spent before she realised it as she hadn’t asked for more cheques.
November 9th, 2005 at 10:28 pm
eh… and whose idea was signing up for the account in the first place eh? tut tut… but yeah one of the major draws with anglos when i opened my account (well before my sister!) was the 8am to 8pm opening hours - you can go any day before or after work, just makes it so much easier. actually i read somewhere that bank of scotland are planning to operate with much better hours in a bid to lure customers, so fingers crossed!