An excellent bank to do business with (HSBC)

Member Name: Frontera2

Product:	HSBC
Date:	19/09/09 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great internet banking

Disadvantages: Long queues in Branch

I've been banking with HSBC since 1994 and they have, in all honestly, never actually let me down and looking back on it have actually been very helpful.

A few years ago, I was struggling to manage my finances as well as I could but HSBC continued to allow Direct Debits etc. to be paid from my current account and this, in my opinion, was better than letting them bounce as this would have caused more problems with the companies that were collecting the payments. Sure, I paid an absolute fortunate for this in charges but at the end of the day I was the one causing the problems for myself.

Anyway, that is a long time in the past and my wife and I now have nearly all of our financial products with HSBC including Current Account, Mortgage (2), FlexiLoan, Credit Card, Life / Home insurance and various savings accounts.

Talking of Mortgages, HSBC have been very helpful in this area too especially given the credit crunch / recession. We've had our mortgage since 2005 and recently found a new house which we wanted to upsize too. The complication was that the seller of this property (which is our dream house) didn't like the idea of us being in a chain so were prepared to accept our offer but wanted to leave the house on the market until we were ready to complete (which meant that we could potentially lose the house) however HSBC suprisingly allowed us to have a brand new mortgage for 90% of the property of the new house and keep our current mortgage going until we could sell the house. Now, as we have 2 decent incomes this wasn't a problem for us but we were suprised that HSBC were so helpful in allowing us to do this.

They aren't perfect, especially in the branches were there is normally a long queue for everything but their internet banking service is, in my opinon, the best in class.

In short, they have stuck with me through good times and bad and therefore have won my loyalty - and I don't think we were unique either, they are a genuinelly excellent bank.

Summary: All round excellent bank