When I got a loan from them, it was a total of 10 minutes between application and funds actually hitting my account.
If their mortgage application process is anything like their loan application process, it has the potential to be a serious game changer for mortgage applications.
All hail our AI overlords
Similar experience when applying for a credit card.
My wife and I joined our accounts and she closed her old current and credit card. I had a credit card with PTSB but the limit was €1000, we were going on a honeymoon to Japan, where often European debit cards working is hit and miss so we were advised to get a decent credit card.
Wasn't until we'd fully changed over that PTSB informed me they wouldn't increase my limit (I had moved jobs 5 months prior), despite 10 years of this card and always paying it back on time and having a decent chunk of cash between my other accounts with them. They also don't do "joint" credit cards - but rather my wife just has a copy of my credit card. So they wouldn't take her earnings into account either and were giving us the run around in getting her a separate one.
On a whim I opened Revolut, applied to their credit card, uploaded a few month's statements and have a €4,000 credit limit from them in 13 minutes along with a digital card, physical one was with me in a few days.
It was the best for traveling and worked absolutely everywhere.
Revolut are genuinely a game changer in terms of the quality of their service and competition. There's obviously some concerns around using them for everything, but I hope they'll at least push our very limited domestic banks into upping their game.
Honestly, I hope you folks south of the border get Starling and/or Monzo at some point as they are just as innovative but offer good customer support too. Anytime I've had to help people with their Revolut account issues their support has been awful - great when it works though.
Irish mortgage rates are a good bit lower than UK rates, many of my work colleagues from the North have been hit hard with interest rate hikes over the last year or two. I know am paying around 3.7%, they are closer to 6%.
we have rediculous protections in place for home owners, so mortgages are a disaster here for the "cheaper" banks. basically bad debt takes 10+ years to reclaim the house if at all even possible for the banks.
Ah fair enough, I have an account with them but mainly use my nationwide account for bills and then starling for personal savings pots and paying for things in euros. Monzo is what a good few friends used though and they seem pretty happy with them.
No doubt they are handy and a step ahead of all branch banks for sures. Starling offers close to what monzo does but monzo charge a monthly fee for those same perks. Also opening a joint account with monzo is notoriously difficult, starling opened one for us in minutes
Not sure why people have a problem with Revolut chat support. I've used it twice and both times my problems were dealt with very quickly by a human. People know by now to just keep typing human please into these ai chats until they get a human or is it just me?
Been a couple of years now. It was after they got their banking licence. Was my dad's, he lives in Derry and uses it for paying in euros as he is always in Donegal.
Same. I tried applying with BOI for a credit card as I’d be traveling, and despite being an “online” process, they made me go to one of their branches to submit docs. I did that, didn’t hear a word for weeks, followed up and apparently they never received my docs. No idea what that branch did to my documents and I’m still annoyed because ~identity theft.
Opened up an account with Revolut instead and got it in a couple of days. Just in time for my travels.
I still don’t keep huge amounts of money in it though because of reports of frozen accounts. I’ve always had a good experience with them but you’ll never know.
BOI are a damn joke.
About 90% of their "online" processes are filling in a form and sending it to a team who were doing the exact same job thirty years ago. The only difference is the forms back then were on paper.
Thanks so much for this. I never use a credit card but always thought it might come in handy for travelling, but the application process was too much hassle for me to bother with.
After reading your post, I got one from Revolut in minutes.
Thanks a million.
The one thing I'd say is figure out how to pay it back before you actually need to know. It's slightly less intuitive than on my PTSB and if you're ever coming to the end of the month and want to get it paid it's better to know the steps.
In PTSB and other banks the credit card is just another bank balance and you just transfer straight from your current/savings into it like any other balance.
In Revolut I've often gone looking for paying it back by going into Cards in the top right, or scrolling through the menus at the bottom. But the actual place to do it is to hit Accounts center screen, Credit Card should be at the bottom and then Repay should be center left of the screen. They usually email your statement in advance which is handy.
Yeah, the forms at the bank was too much effort for a credit card I wasn't particularly interested in.
The Revolut application was extremely straightforward.
Load of shitebags that couldn’t get credit cards or loans anywhere else (for good reason) shilling for Revolut is wild. Not you, above you in the thread.
I mean their interest rate is essentially standard market rate (Paradoxically - people who need to worry about CC interest rates are not the people who care about CC interest rates).
Pretty sure there's an annual fee/stamp duty on it - somewhere between €25-50. Basically the same as other providers.
Yeah Revolut are fantastic for travelling. This list is great for see which ATMs offer free cash withdrawls:
[https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kh7x28lca0vep8wuyt5xa/Revolut\_FreeATM.xlsx?rlkey=0g9o90epsmw2b9jthfqmp1w28&e=1&dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kh7x28lca0vep8wuyt5xa/Revolut_FreeATM.xlsx?rlkey=0g9o90epsmw2b9jthfqmp1w28&e=1&dl=0)
I don't think so. At least mine isn't.
Pretty sure ptsb told me joint credit cards aren't allowed because a spouse could get credit out in a partner's name and a divorce could leave someone saddled with the others credit card debt - something like that anyway.
Traditional banks aren't that much different for personal loans, a family member of mine had a €12,000 loan approved instantly through the AIB app a few years ago. If it's referred for review I believe the turnaround time is still just a couple of hours with them.
I cant really tell what revolut is bringing to the market apart from competition, which is good, but I'll go with rate over fintech slickness any day.
It's even more stark
I went into an AIB branch to get a loan and the loan officer basically had me fill in the details on my mobile phone and submit it on the app.
The branches are a joke these days
I had an issue closing a loan officially (had paid the full balance and brought it to zero.) I had to jump through hoops and pay €50 to have the loan officially closed and paid off. Fucked me about for 3 days, branch staff, including manager, had no idea what I was talking about and directed me to a payphone in there to get help.
Why even pay any of them to be there at that point lol
Sold a car about 4 years earlier than planned so I think that was it, interest owed but they didn't show that in the app or online, sale went smooth, garage transferred the money and all was well as I paid the loan off to 0. The garage rang a day or two later freaking out that there was still an outstanding finance on the car, thinking I was screwing them over maybe, and that's when AIB started giving me the run around. Got it sorted but they did not make it easy for me! Tbh I think it was more than 50 but this is two or three years ago now.
i tried to get a loan from BoI last year and despite providing all credentials they requested, they kept saying "we're currently dealing with a high volume of requests" over and over when i pressed for updates and then they had the cheek to tell me my documents had expired and to upload them again.
i'll be doing it with revolut next time.
I applied for a credit card with BOI a few years ago and I never heard back anything about it. I haven't needed it really, just was trying to get one to rent a car, so it hasn't affected my life but the fact that they've just never even alerted me if it was approved or denied ever is bizarre
I got a loan through the BOI app last year and had the money in my account the next morning.
The main banks are slow to innovate, but in terms of loans they're extremely efficient these days, unless you're an edge case or are flagged as a risk.
Yep I got 20k unsecured personal loan in seconds. Actually got a call a day or 2 later saying the loan was approved. I said I already have the 20K in my account, he just said ok in a bit of a shocked voice
I was blown away by how simple it was. They have really streamlined the process for all the beurocratic form filling and shite you have to deal with at brick and mortar banks.
A few years ago VHI sent me a cheque rather than direct deposit. I hadn't seen one in years and wasn't arsed finding time to go to the bank during work.
I found out with Revolut I could cash a cheque by signing and dating the back of the cheque and sending them a picture of both sides of the cheque. It was put into my account with a couple minutes.
Incredible service, I'm glad the brick and mortar legacy banks who have a monopoly/racquet on the market are shitting it.
> I found out with Revolut I could cash a cheque by signing and dating the back of the cheque and sending them a picture of both sides of the cheque.
Oh wow. Didn't know that. I've been keeping my AIB account open as I found it handy to lodge cheques through their late opening hubs.
Revolut are class, and as expensive as AIB are with fees I had an unexpected bill abroad, looked for money to tie me over and it was in my account ready to spend within 10 minutes! I was blown away, thought I wouldn't receive it for days.
Not sure what I'm doing wrong but have applied for loans via them and end up being declined in what AIB give out in 5 minutes. I don't use it as a main account so feel that could be a factor.
There seems to be a link between AIB and Revolut broken. They told me in chat their system which validates your salary for the 'Pay Later' function is broken, both an Advisor and a Line manager said the same thing and that it's declining lots of people for multiple functions and products.
I've asked Revolut to resolve, but they had no interest and it's gone to the Ombudsman now.
Fintech banks are great, until they're not.
I'm skeptical about calling it a game changer. Yes, turn around for mortgage approval can be long, but it's far from the longest wait period during a house purchase. Approval in principal can be a couple of days to a week , but closing with the solicitors can take weeks and not solely from waiting on funds from the bank.
Much of what the article mentions as Revoluts main advantage is their existing customer base, but most people I know aren't using Revolut for much more than money transfers. I don't expect a huge amount of those customers to flock to Revolut for a mortgage on familiarity alone.
That floored me when I moved here.
The UK, when you exchange contracts, the completion date is set in stone. Causing a delay pretty much guarantees legal action - it's so rare that few solicitors have even seen it happen.
I couldn't - still can't - understand how Ireland managed to copy England's homework for "how to manage the sale of a house" and screwed up the most important part of the process.
I would very much doubt it.
You can't transfer anything over €1 (even from vault to vault on my own account) without taking a live verification picture that matches against the one they have when you set up the account (in addition to the biometric data you need to digitally sign loan agreement / login)
Obviously the rates are a big aspect. But if Revolut offer similar service to what they currently offer on loans/credit cards it should still be a very welcome addition to what's on offer. They tend to waive the 6 months in your current job for these products - where other banks don't which can be such an enormous headache. Guy I know has a job offer - almost double his current salary but has a loan offer for a mortgage on a house not ready until Sept - so he's turned down the job because the bank told him he can't change job. Which is nuts.
Obviously yes.
But a black and white rule is a crude implement to apply when assessing risk here. They apply this same rule when applying to other credit products in our domestic banks, and Revolut do not. They're assessing the risk differently - which they may do for mortgages as well.
I don't expect them to be very different on mortgages tbh. Capital requirements and repossession being a bitch will affect them as much as anyone else.
Going direct doesn't always result in better outcomes, it depends on their current book and the type of risk they are seeking. Furthermore they may offer different benefits. It's not the same as a reseller relationship.
Their insurance products for travel / pet / device / car are pretty meh - it's just wrapped under the Revolut app so it can be handy to have it all in the one place, but they are are just underwritten by other providers and it's usually better value to go direct.
Car insurance is shite, was quoted the same as liberty and took it feeling their customer service couldn't be worse that liberty. It's worse, way worse. You can't even call them, and the people on the chat just repeat back what's in the documentation 100 times before they attempt to give you an actual answer.
Got the smart driving device also, never worked, got sent two new ones and they don't work, app just says it's not plugged in. So not covered for accidental damage, and apparently there's nothing I can do about it unless I cancel and reapply costing me loads.
Once it's up I'm done with them. Very dissapointed.
I never know why banks don’t just copy revolut’s clean interface and ease of doing things. For instance, how much have I spent today / this week. Revolut can tell me easily, normal banks you would need to add up every transaction yourself. I guess they have second rate developers
Their architecture and processes are older and bloated with legacy so they can't start off with a clean slate.
The pay structure and reputation of the banks also makes it impossible to hire in and retain talented tech workers at scale so projects are always delayed or scrapped.
They can’t afford it. To hire a large enough and competent enough team who’d be willing to take the project on, knowing the mountain of bureaucracy involved, would cost too much and take too long. Also the interface is just the tip of the iceberg, any remotely complex service has a whole rake of systems under the hood which is where the majority of the work is.
I haven’t gone all in on Revolut yet, but so so happy at what they’re doing for banking in this country.
They can’t though. I know the default position is that the banks are rolling in it and that is true to an extent however most of the money goes to maintaining bloated, outdated and inefficient processes and technology. Given that most established banks are running systems held together with sticky tape I would expect that even Revolut budgets would not produce Revolut results.
On top of that, most senior people in the banks have been there for most of their careers and are simply unable to comprehend doing anything radically different or difficult. Banks have cultures of keeping your head down and carrying on. They are not places that foster innovation and anything in any way transformational inevitable gets bogged down in process and politics further adding to costs.
I do all of my banking with them now and would have absolutely no issue having my mortgage with them. I'm looking forward to seeing what rates they offer.
Honestly with the banks closing locations and doing anything on their power to avoid face to face interaction there is almost no reason to stick with them.
Back in the day you would have a relationship with an individual human but now it’s all on the phone and fairly unprofessional - no shade on the call Centre staff but not the same as meeting a guy in a suit and chatting through the details of your situation.
The banks have intentionally degraded their competitive advantage by automating everything and contributing to hollowing out towns.
I’d love to “buy Irish” but the Irish banks are risk averse, leveraging government schemes, parasitic and poor innovators. Is “rent seekers” the correct economic term? Let me know.
They deserve the giant kick in the dick Revolut is going to give them.
It's long overdue. Years ago I made the decision to move all of my banking to KBC, specifically to avoid the Irish banks. Aside from everything they did to put the country in the gutter, they just bloody charged too much to have a simple current account! I got free banking with KBC. I got my first mortgage through EBS but switched that to KBC as well.
Once KBC fled the country, my mortgage automatically moved to BOI, but I had a decision to make on what to do with my current account. Revolut didn't even have Irish IBANs at that stage but I didn't want to go back to the Irish banks, so I took the leap and moved everything over.
I hope Revolut mortgages kick the absolute dick off the Irish banks and force them to stop ripping us off. I'll definitely be moving my mortgage to them if it makes financial sense.
I closed my BOI account just a few days ago because I use Revolut for everything now. I know they have strengths that Revolut don't, and I hope I don't regret it in the future. But I hadn't used my BOI account in years and it had gone into overdraft on fees alone.
The traditional banks have literally 0 real strengths over something like Revolut. The only reason people think that is because they are falsely reassured by the idea you can physically walk into a branch of BoI, despite the service being shite and them trying to increasingly direct you to their broken app anyway
The BOI app is such a joke. I got a new card and you need to activate it on the app. You basically click this 'activate' button but it's not clickable, just a picture of a box. Queue me on the phone dealing with their IVR. I get through to someone who nonchalantly tells me "oh yeah, tap below and to the left of the box, it's like a secret button".
Unreal
if you walk into a bank with a problem they often just tell you to call the phone number so you can wait 30+ minutes on hold to talk to someone in a call center. then after 5 minutes they tell you to go into a branch. then you back into the branch and they tell you to call again, and so on.
revolut, in not having physical branches, ironically has better service since they can't fob you off and claim that there's nothing you can do but take time out of your weekday before 4pm to head to a physical branch.
Any time I've been a victim of fraud I've just phoned the number on the back of my bank card and I'm talking to a human within minutes. They've always handled it well and I've never lost money that way.
I woke up one morning to see multiple transactions on my Revolut card totalling a few hundred Euro. I went onto the chat function and had it sorted and money back into my account within minutes.
This was a fair few years ago now and I've read about people having problems since then, but my experience was positive anyway.
That's good news. I had assumed that once they became an official bank in Ireland that those complaints would have stopped but I'm a bit out of the loop myself.
I tried out the loan process with revolut last year and found that they wouldn't offer me the advertised rate, but were happy to lend to me at a higher rate.
It ended up about the same as the local credit union but I went with revolut in the end as I didn't have to leave work to arrange it.
Same here, they offered me 11+% (I can't remember exactly the percent) on an 11k loan. A local credit union offered me 6.2% a few days after joining.
I've been with revolut years, but don't get my salary or put huge sums into it, so that probably played into it.
I remember when they came out with joint account and I could finally break free from Irish banks and move my mortgage payments and bills over. We both had to take a day off work to go in to sub in person to cancel the account, wait in line for hours in the heat with no air con, screaming babies, and dodgy looking clients of all varieties. By the time get got to talk to somebody, they said we had to transfer over the remainder of fees the would have been due(or something) even though we had already comely cleared account. The deposits desk had just closed though so we’d have to come back and go through it all again after taking another day off work. I can understand people’s reluctance to move when they make it so difficult but god damn it feels good to be free of them now.
While I do use revolut, I'm still hesitant to use them as a main bank account after I read/heard about their practice of freezing an account if they figure there is anything minutely suspicious going on according to their own systems. These freezes are automatic that then need to be checked by a human.
I understand that there is protections in place, but an all out freeze that even stops direct debits and payments into the account over something sounding nefarious on a direct transfer message is a bit too much.
With all above said, it's great to have another player in the market to shake things up. The more the merrier.
I work in the defence forces, in 2018 I was deployed to Lebanon, i put a travel notice on my card well in advance saying i would be here long term. AIB blocked my card a few weeks into the trip, thank god I had to Defence forces supporting me or I would have been stranded with no Money. Anyways I rang AIB and they told me I needed to come into a branch and prove it was me with the card which obviously i couldn't do so the card stayed blocked for the entire 8 months. I wasn't able to pay for my leave to come home or anything. Anyways I opened a revolut account and use it as a main bank, i get my wages paid into it, my car insurance is done through it and I got a mortgage in 2022 from them. People shit on them all the time but they offer a good alternative and I despise AIB and BOI, i cant tell you first hand both banks are terrible to work with for any documents when getting a mortgage
Money is a commodity. If its interest rate is lower and it unlocks some benefits on the day to day banking side, it’s a no-🧠er and should hopefully spur more competitiveness from the local banking cartel here!
I want to be able to pay down the principal on a loan on a daily basis versus a monthly basis…. Nice savings to be made there. Also no fines for early repayments
I'd really struggle to have a bad word to say about them. Everything from taking out a loan to Freezing/ reordering cards to speaking to a representative has been amazing.
I thought that they were notorious for bad customer support and not refunding victims of fraud? I'm not with BOI anymore but they (and MBNA, who I was with before them) were hassle free for solving fraud problems.
Essentially started using Revolut for everything, significantly easier to use than AIB. Literally anytime I try and use AIB it's a huge hassel that takes forever to resolve. Only reason I still have an AIB account is cause I haven't had the time to close it or anything.
Will they offer offsets and other features that are missing from Irish banking? I Imagine offering something like offsets will encourage you to do full banking with them and not just mortgage.
FYI I decided I needed a credit card for various uses and AIB &BOI messed me around for weeks, asking for PDFS and proofs of this and that, revolut had it approved in 20mins....
I’d suppose applicants would still be subject to affordability assessment, risk assessment etc which i doubt cant be done in 10mins? I mean if they do more power to consumers but wouldn’t they be subject to eu regulations? Personal loans isnt the same product than a mortgage- how are the deeds managed ? Mecanism run secured vs unsecured loans? Whats the protection if applicant becomes at risk and default? Quite few questions but again more power to consumers is good
I use Revolut car insurance, they gave me great quote. I also heavily use Revolut for day to day payments. I think most of my disposable part of salary ends up through Revolut. But I don’t see it becoming my main bank. I use Revolut as some sort of stop gap “insurance” to keep spending under control and all that. I move 100€ to Revolut and then I spend that. If I run out of money on Revolut I simply wait a day or two then move another 100€. If I had all of my salary on Revolut, hmmm. Not sure how would my spending habits change. I like having Revolut as a barrier to my actual bank.
I have great credit and was rejected for a loan application on 2 occasions, no reason given.
I ended up going with AIB, approved in 5 mins through the app but at higher interest rate. From what i’ve heard you need to have your wages paid directly into revolut.
Yes and Nope. The point of the land registry is really to prevent people re-issuing a deed after selling it to someone else, formalising the boundary and simplifying tracing title.
You still need a deed even with the land registry, if you lose one they can help in re-issuing.
Long term but we are talking decades from now not years I believe the plan is too phase out title deeds but that's been the plan for more than 2 decades already with little movement.
"The assumption among mortgage brokers is that Revolut will offer mortgages directly — though industry sources say there seems to be an acceptance at the company that potential customers will want to be able to speak to someone about one of the most important financial transactions of their lives."
Exactly, talking to a chat bot, or talking to some random dude in a swimtrunk and flipflops through the app support chat is not going to work if you want to hand out mortgages. They will have to turn into a proper bank, and with that comes price increases and then they are no different than any other bank.
Why does what the person is wearing have any bearing on it? Considering how difficult getting a mortgage is these days, as long as theyre competent they can wear a mankini for all i care
Because some some people want to make sweeping assumptions about thijgs they know nothing about, to work in mortgages you have to be qualified and be able to follow legislation. The guy on custmoer service might be at home naked, but the guy issuimg the loan definitly isnt
It's about time the banks got a kick up their arse. Revolut will have to follow all regulations just as banks but their advantage is they don't waste their money on branches and personnel. Their technical infrastructure is their cost, all banks near that burden too.
From my experience meeting with a person in a branch is absolutely useless. Adds nothing of value to the process.
If I hadn't had that experience I'd be thinking the same as you. But the banks as an entity see this as so transactional that I don't think there's any purpose to the physical meeting.
The "we'll see what we can do for you" shtick doesn't fly with me.
Granted I'm living in the UK now but my mortgage is 100% digital. Applied and approved within hours (at the height of the UK mortgage rate issues last year) and I'm totally happy with everything being digital. I can see my payment schedules, additional payments, all documents, rates and even open additional savings accounts.
Contrary to what you say I can speak to someone within minutes and can still call someone if I need. Not that I ever need to because I can self manage just about every aspect of the mortgage through the app (which is fantastic).
It won't work for everyone but digital banking and digital mortgages by extension are absolutely the way forward for the majority of folk.
It's fascinating how some people will still defend the Irish banking system.
Anyone who's ever lived anywhere else in the world knows full well that the Irish banks are still living in the 1980s and their websites/apps are a thin layer of paint over the top.
Oh come off it. Just because I have my doubts, doesnt mean I work for a bank ffs. I just cant see myself applying for a mortgage through an app. I had to chat to BOI online for a mortgage and it is tedious, I just want to call a person and talk things through rather than waiting for a reply on chat a day later for each questions. Is all.
For a complex case you’re probably going through a broker anyway. For a simple case, there isn’t much in the way of questions. I suppose some fall in between, and there the traditional banks do have an advantage, yeah.
I applied online for an AIB mortgage 8 years ago; I think the only times I had to talk to an actual person was when I had to go to a branch to give them copies of documents so that they could lose them (at the time they’d let you upload most docs, but there were a few where they wanted to take a photocopy themselves).
OK, well when I got my first mortgage, I was speaking to the bank for months on end. Fuck me, it was a lot of work. Maybe things changed, I dont know. This was also 7 years ago.
They’re just about the most locked-down, heavily regulated, pro-forma contract in the country. How the hell did you need several months for someone to walk you through it?
This entire argument is giving off “I did Third Year four times, so obviously I understand it better than you clowns who only did it once” vibes
I got my first one in 1995, all i had to do was bring in 2 payslips and fill some forms, 4 pages of them.
But then again, my first house cost £58k in kildare. My current car cost more
The process took long, lots of documentation, going back and forth, everything from first contact to having the keys in my hand, I wasnt talking about just the contract. And I am not taking any high road man. Just sharing my thoughts/experience.
People want their mortgage done fast, with the most favourable repayment plan, and with as few hurdles as possible. Dressing up to take forever to decide more information is needed to process an application is not a process that adds value to the experience of the applicant. That random dude can be naked for all I care if I can be told what I need to provide and get a decision in a fraction of the time.
The issue is chatting through your phone regarding a mortgage. I just want to speak to someone. I dont care if he is naked either. My point was, Revolut support are just users like you and me, they are not trained financial experts. Anyway, if they offer a good product and the sign up process is robust, I am interested. Just have my doubts.
The preference towards phonecalls is more of a gen X thing. Millennials and younger are noted as preferring typed methods of communication. Gen X is a bit late to the party if they're seeking mortgage at this stage.
AI chat bots are more akin to IVR, so pointing at chat bots to discredit webchat support is dishonest when you ignore that we have been talking to prerecorded messages for decades.
You are very wide of the mark if you think the people you are talking to over the phone or even in a branch are anything close to financial experts.
A lot of them think they are too which is weird because the exams are ridiculously easy and they are trained to sell their financial product only. They are sales people nothing else.
I cannot stress enough that they know fuck all.
Source: I've designed and configured the interest rate curves that do the pricing for major banks in Europe and UK.
When I took out a mortgage 7 years ago I did it all online with AIB and didn’t talk to anyone through the whole process. The market is there for it, even though it might not suit everyone. Mortgage brokers are typically dealing with the people who need assistance, so their viewpoint is a bit biased
Yeah, I see something happening in this space. AIB/BOI get crucified when they want to close stores but new entrants don’t have to make any. Similarly as regards ATMs. I see legislation coming in to level the playing field. AIB/BOI are somewhat being forced to cater to their older, non IT savvy clients.
AIB/BOI have a massive advantage with a huge market share and general reluctance of people to switch. Never mind the huge capital and enormous profits. AIB/BOI choose to outsource and offshore their IT, all the while wrapping in countless layers of bureaucracy, politics and incompetence.
Under no circumstance can we ever allow any politician to tip the scales further in their favour. Let the dinosaurs go extinct.
I have Revolut as a backup account, it's great, nice and fast, but there's a reason for that - they are effectively an internet bank. Things are changing for them, but as someone who works in banking, I certainly wouldn't put all my savings with them.
Yes and no. With the LT bank accounts you are "covered" by the Lithuanian central bank with deposit insurance, but practically will that happen if Revolut went into default during a crisis? Hmm not so sure.
Also most Irish banks are externally rated. Revolut is not rated. If there's any sort of crisis (internal or market) it could instantly fold, we just don't know enough about it's internals (for now).
They have an Irish IBAN, but I'm pretty sure the account is still in Revolut Lithuania.
And Lithuania does not have the money to bail out Revolut. The whole country would undoubtedly be bankrupted trying to.
However, I could well see the EU stepping in because the risk to the banking industry if the deposit guarantee turns out not to be worth the paper it isn't written on is huge.
I wanted to get a loan with revolut, but it turns out you need an existing account with someone like BOI. If I need an account with BOI, why wouldn't I just get a loan with them?
Plus, those accounts cost money.
I went with a credit union instead, so it took longer but was pretty cheap. 6.5% APR over 3 years for 5000.
Also, their car insurance is a joke. On my old car, it wasn't that much cheaper than Kenco, but it required me to have a very restrictive tracker installed. There's no option to not have the tracker. Even after 3 years of experience, the option still isn't there for me.
I tried again with my new car and they wouldn't even give a quote, so fuck them, phoned a couple brokers and had a very solid quote in about 2 hours.
Seriously, how the fuck do you disable "smart driving"? I've got 4 years no claims bonus, I don't need some twats tracking me to make sure I'm not 10 over the limit.
Load of Revolut shills in this thread who do not care about how awful their customer service is or how they close accounts without notice or information. When shit hits the fan and you cannot access your money let’s see how great Revolut are.
/r/revolut
I bet all the people gloating about loans and credit card were happy to take anything Revolut gave them because they wouldn’t get one at their bank and Revolut is riding them on interest rates.
And I can’t wait to have something happen and need to talk to someone about my mortgage and getting nothing but a fucking chat bot. Good times.
Myself and my wife made an appointment in our local AIB branch. We planned to open a joint current account and presumed it would be a simple process. We sat down with the staff member and explained what we wanted. He let a long exhale/sigh and said, 'just open a revolut account, it's much easier.'
That was that
When I got a loan from them, it was a total of 10 minutes between application and funds actually hitting my account. If their mortgage application process is anything like their loan application process, it has the potential to be a serious game changer for mortgage applications. All hail our AI overlords
Similar experience when applying for a credit card. My wife and I joined our accounts and she closed her old current and credit card. I had a credit card with PTSB but the limit was €1000, we were going on a honeymoon to Japan, where often European debit cards working is hit and miss so we were advised to get a decent credit card. Wasn't until we'd fully changed over that PTSB informed me they wouldn't increase my limit (I had moved jobs 5 months prior), despite 10 years of this card and always paying it back on time and having a decent chunk of cash between my other accounts with them. They also don't do "joint" credit cards - but rather my wife just has a copy of my credit card. So they wouldn't take her earnings into account either and were giving us the run around in getting her a separate one. On a whim I opened Revolut, applied to their credit card, uploaded a few month's statements and have a €4,000 credit limit from them in 13 minutes along with a digital card, physical one was with me in a few days. It was the best for traveling and worked absolutely everywhere. Revolut are genuinely a game changer in terms of the quality of their service and competition. There's obviously some concerns around using them for everything, but I hope they'll at least push our very limited domestic banks into upping their game.
Honestly, I hope you folks south of the border get Starling and/or Monzo at some point as they are just as innovative but offer good customer support too. Anytime I've had to help people with their Revolut account issues their support has been awful - great when it works though.
Yeah reading about banking in the south is such an incredibly depressing experience. How is the wealthier part of this island so bad at this?
because northern ireland is still part of the UK, which is a massive and competitive market
Irish mortgage rates are a good bit lower than UK rates, many of my work colleagues from the North have been hit hard with interest rate hikes over the last year or two. I know am paying around 3.7%, they are closer to 6%.
we have rediculous protections in place for home owners, so mortgages are a disaster here for the "cheaper" banks. basically bad debt takes 10+ years to reclaim the house if at all even possible for the banks.
I used Starling as my main bank when I lived in the uk for a few years. Loved it. Always new features coming.
Monzo used to be absolutely fantastic but it is absolutely awful these days. We had several issues and they were less than useless helping us.
Ah fair enough, I have an account with them but mainly use my nationwide account for bills and then starling for personal savings pots and paying for things in euros. Monzo is what a good few friends used though and they seem pretty happy with them.
No doubt they are handy and a step ahead of all branch banks for sures. Starling offers close to what monzo does but monzo charge a monthly fee for those same perks. Also opening a joint account with monzo is notoriously difficult, starling opened one for us in minutes
Not sure why people have a problem with Revolut chat support. I've used it twice and both times my problems were dealt with very quickly by a human. People know by now to just keep typing human please into these ai chats until they get a human or is it just me?
No I'm well aware of how chat work lol. It was a suspended account that we needed unlocked. Very much a poor experience.
Was it a non bank account that got suspended? Just wondering if that makes a difference.
Been a couple of years now. It was after they got their banking licence. Was my dad's, he lives in Derry and uses it for paying in euros as he is always in Donegal.
what support did monzo do well?
Same. I tried applying with BOI for a credit card as I’d be traveling, and despite being an “online” process, they made me go to one of their branches to submit docs. I did that, didn’t hear a word for weeks, followed up and apparently they never received my docs. No idea what that branch did to my documents and I’m still annoyed because ~identity theft. Opened up an account with Revolut instead and got it in a couple of days. Just in time for my travels. I still don’t keep huge amounts of money in it though because of reports of frozen accounts. I’ve always had a good experience with them but you’ll never know.
BOI are a damn joke. About 90% of their "online" processes are filling in a form and sending it to a team who were doing the exact same job thirty years ago. The only difference is the forms back then were on paper.
That’s a juicy GDPR violation, you should drop them in the shit for losing your personal data!
It happened last year and I don’t have much to prove it 🥲 can I still file a report even with little to no proof?
I’d say you can still send in a report, at the very least it’ll waste some of their time and make them sweat a bit! 👌🏻
Thanks so much for this. I never use a credit card but always thought it might come in handy for travelling, but the application process was too much hassle for me to bother with. After reading your post, I got one from Revolut in minutes. Thanks a million.
The one thing I'd say is figure out how to pay it back before you actually need to know. It's slightly less intuitive than on my PTSB and if you're ever coming to the end of the month and want to get it paid it's better to know the steps. In PTSB and other banks the credit card is just another bank balance and you just transfer straight from your current/savings into it like any other balance. In Revolut I've often gone looking for paying it back by going into Cards in the top right, or scrolling through the menus at the bottom. But the actual place to do it is to hit Accounts center screen, Credit Card should be at the bottom and then Repay should be center left of the screen. They usually email your statement in advance which is handy.
A form was too much hassle?
Yeah, the forms at the bank was too much effort for a credit card I wasn't particularly interested in. The Revolut application was extremely straightforward.
If you’re not that interested in it I hope you enjoy the total lack of customer service when you are interested in it.
I'm not sure why you're being so aggressive this early in the morning but I hope whatever is making you like this resolves itself. Have a great day.
Load of shitebags that couldn’t get credit cards or loans anywhere else (for good reason) shilling for Revolut is wild. Not you, above you in the thread.
Are there much fees for having a credit card?
I mean their interest rate is essentially standard market rate (Paradoxically - people who need to worry about CC interest rates are not the people who care about CC interest rates). Pretty sure there's an annual fee/stamp duty on it - somewhere between €25-50. Basically the same as other providers.
Yeah Revolut are fantastic for travelling. This list is great for see which ATMs offer free cash withdrawls: [https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kh7x28lca0vep8wuyt5xa/Revolut\_FreeATM.xlsx?rlkey=0g9o90epsmw2b9jthfqmp1w28&e=1&dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kh7x28lca0vep8wuyt5xa/Revolut_FreeATM.xlsx?rlkey=0g9o90epsmw2b9jthfqmp1w28&e=1&dl=0)
Did Revolut offer a joint credit card? Annoys me that I just have a copy of my wife’s cc. Can’t see any info online etc.
I don't think so. At least mine isn't. Pretty sure ptsb told me joint credit cards aren't allowed because a spouse could get credit out in a partner's name and a divorce could leave someone saddled with the others credit card debt - something like that anyway.
Traditional banks aren't that much different for personal loans, a family member of mine had a €12,000 loan approved instantly through the AIB app a few years ago. If it's referred for review I believe the turnaround time is still just a couple of hours with them. I cant really tell what revolut is bringing to the market apart from competition, which is good, but I'll go with rate over fintech slickness any day.
It's even more stark I went into an AIB branch to get a loan and the loan officer basically had me fill in the details on my mobile phone and submit it on the app.
The branches are a joke these days I had an issue closing a loan officially (had paid the full balance and brought it to zero.) I had to jump through hoops and pay €50 to have the loan officially closed and paid off. Fucked me about for 3 days, branch staff, including manager, had no idea what I was talking about and directed me to a payphone in there to get help. Why even pay any of them to be there at that point lol
You paid back the loan, and then had to pay 50 to close the loan account. Wtf, did you pay it back early or something?
Sounds like they just paid off what was on the statement rather than ran the term down.
Sold a car about 4 years earlier than planned so I think that was it, interest owed but they didn't show that in the app or online, sale went smooth, garage transferred the money and all was well as I paid the loan off to 0. The garage rang a day or two later freaking out that there was still an outstanding finance on the car, thinking I was screwing them over maybe, and that's when AIB started giving me the run around. Got it sorted but they did not make it easy for me! Tbh I think it was more than 50 but this is two or three years ago now.
i tried to get a loan from BoI last year and despite providing all credentials they requested, they kept saying "we're currently dealing with a high volume of requests" over and over when i pressed for updates and then they had the cheek to tell me my documents had expired and to upload them again. i'll be doing it with revolut next time.
I applied for a credit card with BOI a few years ago and I never heard back anything about it. I haven't needed it really, just was trying to get one to rent a car, so it hasn't affected my life but the fact that they've just never even alerted me if it was approved or denied ever is bizarre
yeah, fucking ridiculous.
I got a loan through the BOI app last year and had the money in my account the next morning. The main banks are slow to innovate, but in terms of loans they're extremely efficient these days, unless you're an edge case or are flagged as a risk.
Yep I got 20k unsecured personal loan in seconds. Actually got a call a day or 2 later saying the loan was approved. I said I already have the 20K in my account, he just said ok in a bit of a shocked voice
I was blown away by how simple it was. They have really streamlined the process for all the beurocratic form filling and shite you have to deal with at brick and mortar banks. A few years ago VHI sent me a cheque rather than direct deposit. I hadn't seen one in years and wasn't arsed finding time to go to the bank during work. I found out with Revolut I could cash a cheque by signing and dating the back of the cheque and sending them a picture of both sides of the cheque. It was put into my account with a couple minutes. Incredible service, I'm glad the brick and mortar legacy banks who have a monopoly/racquet on the market are shitting it.
How exactly do you do this in Revolut app?
Home screen > add money > change > deposit a cheque. https://help.revolut.com/en-US/help/adding-money/with-mobile-check-deposit/how-do-i-deposit-a-check-in-the-revolut-app/
They don't do that in the Irish app; you must have set up your account elsewhere.
I just got a cheque from Axa today. First thing I said to the mrs was "what the fuck do I do with this? I use Revolut for my bank"
> I found out with Revolut I could cash a cheque by signing and dating the back of the cheque and sending them a picture of both sides of the cheque. Oh wow. Didn't know that. I've been keeping my AIB account open as I found it handy to lodge cheques through their late opening hubs.
How do you do that?
Relevant choice of flair
This is similar to AIB. Don’t get me started with BOI. They are a complete joke. You could be waiting weeks!
That's why BOI didn't need a bailout!
I don't like BOI by any means, but in fairness I got a loan through their app last year and the money was in my account the next morning.
Not AI though just simple rule/decision software. Been around for decades.
Thank you. I was wondering what the relevance was, when I’d understood it to be a straightforward decision tree.
Revolut are class, and as expensive as AIB are with fees I had an unexpected bill abroad, looked for money to tie me over and it was in my account ready to spend within 10 minutes! I was blown away, thought I wouldn't receive it for days.
Not sure what I'm doing wrong but have applied for loans via them and end up being declined in what AIB give out in 5 minutes. I don't use it as a main account so feel that could be a factor.
There seems to be a link between AIB and Revolut broken. They told me in chat their system which validates your salary for the 'Pay Later' function is broken, both an Advisor and a Line manager said the same thing and that it's declining lots of people for multiple functions and products. I've asked Revolut to resolve, but they had no interest and it's gone to the Ombudsman now. Fintech banks are great, until they're not.
It kept saying something went wrong for me when trying to validate my bank statement history.
I'm skeptical about calling it a game changer. Yes, turn around for mortgage approval can be long, but it's far from the longest wait period during a house purchase. Approval in principal can be a couple of days to a week , but closing with the solicitors can take weeks and not solely from waiting on funds from the bank. Much of what the article mentions as Revoluts main advantage is their existing customer base, but most people I know aren't using Revolut for much more than money transfers. I don't expect a huge amount of those customers to flock to Revolut for a mortgage on familiarity alone.
That floored me when I moved here. The UK, when you exchange contracts, the completion date is set in stone. Causing a delay pretty much guarantees legal action - it's so rare that few solicitors have even seen it happen. I couldn't - still can't - understand how Ireland managed to copy England's homework for "how to manage the sale of a house" and screwed up the most important part of the process.
What's the application process like? If someone got access to your account could they get a loan within 10 minutes and transfer it?
I would very much doubt it. You can't transfer anything over €1 (even from vault to vault on my own account) without taking a live verification picture that matches against the one they have when you set up the account (in addition to the biometric data you need to digitally sign loan agreement / login)
Tell me the rates and then I'll be interested.
Obviously the rates are a big aspect. But if Revolut offer similar service to what they currently offer on loans/credit cards it should still be a very welcome addition to what's on offer. They tend to waive the 6 months in your current job for these products - where other banks don't which can be such an enormous headache. Guy I know has a job offer - almost double his current salary but has a loan offer for a mortgage on a house not ready until Sept - so he's turned down the job because the bank told him he can't change job. Which is nuts.
Its because you can be sacked within the 1st 6 months of your job. After this you're permanent so your job is more stable.
Isn't there no unfair dismissal here until a year anyway, so technically a job can sack you within a year with no hassle.
I think you are right with 12 months probation, a lot of places opt for 6 months though in contracts.
Obviously yes. But a black and white rule is a crude implement to apply when assessing risk here. They apply this same rule when applying to other credit products in our domestic banks, and Revolut do not. They're assessing the risk differently - which they may do for mortgages as well.
I don't expect them to be very different on mortgages tbh. Capital requirements and repossession being a bitch will affect them as much as anyone else.
I heard their car insurance was game changer… from the quotation they weren’t that competitive for me… also would need tracker…
They're underwritten by AIG, who you can just go to direct. I didn't find their insurance competitive either.
Going direct doesn't always result in better outcomes, it depends on their current book and the type of risk they are seeking. Furthermore they may offer different benefits. It's not the same as a reseller relationship.
Their car insurance for me this year was €150 cheaper than the next nearest quote
Yes I was surprised I ended up with them too, they were the cheapest option. Not by that much, but significant enough (and cheaper than AIG directly).
Just go to a broker they get the best deals I find. Can't do it online but its worth it.
They were still over the price Revolut quoted
Revolut for me was well over its4women quote
Their insurance products for travel / pet / device / car are pretty meh - it's just wrapped under the Revolut app so it can be handy to have it all in the one place, but they are are just underwritten by other providers and it's usually better value to go direct.
Car insurance is shite, was quoted the same as liberty and took it feeling their customer service couldn't be worse that liberty. It's worse, way worse. You can't even call them, and the people on the chat just repeat back what's in the documentation 100 times before they attempt to give you an actual answer. Got the smart driving device also, never worked, got sent two new ones and they don't work, app just says it's not plugged in. So not covered for accidental damage, and apparently there's nothing I can do about it unless I cancel and reapply costing me loads. Once it's up I'm done with them. Very dissapointed.
Tell me their fixed rates and how long I can fix it for before you get my hopes up. If they can undercut Irish banks it will be great.
I never know why banks don’t just copy revolut’s clean interface and ease of doing things. For instance, how much have I spent today / this week. Revolut can tell me easily, normal banks you would need to add up every transaction yourself. I guess they have second rate developers
Their architecture and processes are older and bloated with legacy so they can't start off with a clean slate. The pay structure and reputation of the banks also makes it impossible to hire in and retain talented tech workers at scale so projects are always delayed or scrapped.
It's the paystructure and antiquated thought process.
They can’t afford it. To hire a large enough and competent enough team who’d be willing to take the project on, knowing the mountain of bureaucracy involved, would cost too much and take too long. Also the interface is just the tip of the iceberg, any remotely complex service has a whole rake of systems under the hood which is where the majority of the work is. I haven’t gone all in on Revolut yet, but so so happy at what they’re doing for banking in this country.
A bank cant afford it lol
They can’t though. I know the default position is that the banks are rolling in it and that is true to an extent however most of the money goes to maintaining bloated, outdated and inefficient processes and technology. Given that most established banks are running systems held together with sticky tape I would expect that even Revolut budgets would not produce Revolut results. On top of that, most senior people in the banks have been there for most of their careers and are simply unable to comprehend doing anything radically different or difficult. Banks have cultures of keeping your head down and carrying on. They are not places that foster innovation and anything in any way transformational inevitable gets bogged down in process and politics further adding to costs.
They can’t even get rid of the dongle for a simple transfer to a new recipient. Good look building the whole thing from scratch.
How is that law if revolut doesn't have to follow it? I'm confused
Sorry, legally was a typo!
I do all of my banking with them now and would have absolutely no issue having my mortgage with them. I'm looking forward to seeing what rates they offer.
Honestly with the banks closing locations and doing anything on their power to avoid face to face interaction there is almost no reason to stick with them. Back in the day you would have a relationship with an individual human but now it’s all on the phone and fairly unprofessional - no shade on the call Centre staff but not the same as meeting a guy in a suit and chatting through the details of your situation. The banks have intentionally degraded their competitive advantage by automating everything and contributing to hollowing out towns. I’d love to “buy Irish” but the Irish banks are risk averse, leveraging government schemes, parasitic and poor innovators. Is “rent seekers” the correct economic term? Let me know. They deserve the giant kick in the dick Revolut is going to give them.
It's long overdue. Years ago I made the decision to move all of my banking to KBC, specifically to avoid the Irish banks. Aside from everything they did to put the country in the gutter, they just bloody charged too much to have a simple current account! I got free banking with KBC. I got my first mortgage through EBS but switched that to KBC as well. Once KBC fled the country, my mortgage automatically moved to BOI, but I had a decision to make on what to do with my current account. Revolut didn't even have Irish IBANs at that stage but I didn't want to go back to the Irish banks, so I took the leap and moved everything over. I hope Revolut mortgages kick the absolute dick off the Irish banks and force them to stop ripping us off. I'll definitely be moving my mortgage to them if it makes financial sense.
I closed my BOI account just a few days ago because I use Revolut for everything now. I know they have strengths that Revolut don't, and I hope I don't regret it in the future. But I hadn't used my BOI account in years and it had gone into overdraft on fees alone.
The traditional banks have literally 0 real strengths over something like Revolut. The only reason people think that is because they are falsely reassured by the idea you can physically walk into a branch of BoI, despite the service being shite and them trying to increasingly direct you to their broken app anyway
The BOI app is such a joke. I got a new card and you need to activate it on the app. You basically click this 'activate' button but it's not clickable, just a picture of a box. Queue me on the phone dealing with their IVR. I get through to someone who nonchalantly tells me "oh yeah, tap below and to the left of the box, it's like a secret button". Unreal
if you walk into a bank with a problem they often just tell you to call the phone number so you can wait 30+ minutes on hold to talk to someone in a call center. then after 5 minutes they tell you to go into a branch. then you back into the branch and they tell you to call again, and so on. revolut, in not having physical branches, ironically has better service since they can't fob you off and claim that there's nothing you can do but take time out of your weekday before 4pm to head to a physical branch.
Any time I've been a victim of fraud I've just phoned the number on the back of my bank card and I'm talking to a human within minutes. They've always handled it well and I've never lost money that way.
I woke up one morning to see multiple transactions on my Revolut card totalling a few hundred Euro. I went onto the chat function and had it sorted and money back into my account within minutes. This was a fair few years ago now and I've read about people having problems since then, but my experience was positive anyway.
That's good news. I had assumed that once they became an official bank in Ireland that those complaints would have stopped but I'm a bit out of the loop myself.
Credit union was far better in terms of interest rates when I got a personal loan, revolut were far more expensive
I tried out the loan process with revolut last year and found that they wouldn't offer me the advertised rate, but were happy to lend to me at a higher rate. It ended up about the same as the local credit union but I went with revolut in the end as I didn't have to leave work to arrange it.
They gave me the lowest advertised rate for a €13k loan almost two years ago. I think certain factors are taken into consideration
Same here, they offered me 11+% (I can't remember exactly the percent) on an 11k loan. A local credit union offered me 6.2% a few days after joining. I've been with revolut years, but don't get my salary or put huge sums into it, so that probably played into it.
I got 9.97% Apr on 3k over 12 months, that was back in September
I remember when they came out with joint account and I could finally break free from Irish banks and move my mortgage payments and bills over. We both had to take a day off work to go in to sub in person to cancel the account, wait in line for hours in the heat with no air con, screaming babies, and dodgy looking clients of all varieties. By the time get got to talk to somebody, they said we had to transfer over the remainder of fees the would have been due(or something) even though we had already comely cleared account. The deposits desk had just closed though so we’d have to come back and go through it all again after taking another day off work. I can understand people’s reluctance to move when they make it so difficult but god damn it feels good to be free of them now.
While I do use revolut, I'm still hesitant to use them as a main bank account after I read/heard about their practice of freezing an account if they figure there is anything minutely suspicious going on according to their own systems. These freezes are automatic that then need to be checked by a human. I understand that there is protections in place, but an all out freeze that even stops direct debits and payments into the account over something sounding nefarious on a direct transfer message is a bit too much. With all above said, it's great to have another player in the market to shake things up. The more the merrier.
I work in the defence forces, in 2018 I was deployed to Lebanon, i put a travel notice on my card well in advance saying i would be here long term. AIB blocked my card a few weeks into the trip, thank god I had to Defence forces supporting me or I would have been stranded with no Money. Anyways I rang AIB and they told me I needed to come into a branch and prove it was me with the card which obviously i couldn't do so the card stayed blocked for the entire 8 months. I wasn't able to pay for my leave to come home or anything. Anyways I opened a revolut account and use it as a main bank, i get my wages paid into it, my car insurance is done through it and I got a mortgage in 2022 from them. People shit on them all the time but they offer a good alternative and I despise AIB and BOI, i cant tell you first hand both banks are terrible to work with for any documents when getting a mortgage
Been using PTSB for years while I live in China. Only time they’ve blocked my account were legitimate reasons. Never had any issue with them.
Money is a commodity. If its interest rate is lower and it unlocks some benefits on the day to day banking side, it’s a no-🧠er and should hopefully spur more competitiveness from the local banking cartel here!
Good news. Fuck the banks, bunch of cunts.
Revolut is a bank.
I want to be able to pay down the principal on a loan on a daily basis versus a monthly basis…. Nice savings to be made there. Also no fines for early repayments
They'll still have the Irish Central Bank rules, so apart from rates, most people will still be locked out.
Rates are the current biggest issue with mortgages in ireland. The Irish banks are a ripoff. The central bank rules are a good thing
I'd really struggle to have a bad word to say about them. Everything from taking out a loan to Freezing/ reordering cards to speaking to a representative has been amazing.
I thought that they were notorious for bad customer support and not refunding victims of fraud? I'm not with BOI anymore but they (and MBNA, who I was with before them) were hassle free for solving fraud problems.
How often do you have fraud problems?
I had it at least twice with each of them. That's spanning back about 20 years.
Essentially started using Revolut for everything, significantly easier to use than AIB. Literally anytime I try and use AIB it's a huge hassel that takes forever to resolve. Only reason I still have an AIB account is cause I haven't had the time to close it or anything.
Will they offer offsets and other features that are missing from Irish banking? I Imagine offering something like offsets will encourage you to do full banking with them and not just mortgage. FYI I decided I needed a credit card for various uses and AIB &BOI messed me around for weeks, asking for PDFS and proofs of this and that, revolut had it approved in 20mins....
Long overdue
I’d suppose applicants would still be subject to affordability assessment, risk assessment etc which i doubt cant be done in 10mins? I mean if they do more power to consumers but wouldn’t they be subject to eu regulations? Personal loans isnt the same product than a mortgage- how are the deeds managed ? Mecanism run secured vs unsecured loans? Whats the protection if applicant becomes at risk and default? Quite few questions but again more power to consumers is good
I use Revolut car insurance, they gave me great quote. I also heavily use Revolut for day to day payments. I think most of my disposable part of salary ends up through Revolut. But I don’t see it becoming my main bank. I use Revolut as some sort of stop gap “insurance” to keep spending under control and all that. I move 100€ to Revolut and then I spend that. If I run out of money on Revolut I simply wait a day or two then move another 100€. If I had all of my salary on Revolut, hmmm. Not sure how would my spending habits change. I like having Revolut as a barrier to my actual bank.
I have great credit and was rejected for a loan application on 2 occasions, no reason given. I ended up going with AIB, approved in 5 mins through the app but at higher interest rate. From what i’ve heard you need to have your wages paid directly into revolut.
Where would the title deeds be held during the course of the mortgage? Genuinely curious do Revolut have a physical presence in Ireland?
Do title deeds still have legal meaning? Isn't the whole point of the land register to obsolete those?
Yes and Nope. The point of the land registry is really to prevent people re-issuing a deed after selling it to someone else, formalising the boundary and simplifying tracing title. You still need a deed even with the land registry, if you lose one they can help in re-issuing. Long term but we are talking decades from now not years I believe the plan is too phase out title deeds but that's been the plan for more than 2 decades already with little movement.
Anybody have text (paywalled)?
This can’t come quickly enough. AIB and boi basically run off their mortgage books
"The assumption among mortgage brokers is that Revolut will offer mortgages directly — though industry sources say there seems to be an acceptance at the company that potential customers will want to be able to speak to someone about one of the most important financial transactions of their lives." Exactly, talking to a chat bot, or talking to some random dude in a swimtrunk and flipflops through the app support chat is not going to work if you want to hand out mortgages. They will have to turn into a proper bank, and with that comes price increases and then they are no different than any other bank.
Why does what the person is wearing have any bearing on it? Considering how difficult getting a mortgage is these days, as long as theyre competent they can wear a mankini for all i care
Because some some people want to make sweeping assumptions about thijgs they know nothing about, to work in mortgages you have to be qualified and be able to follow legislation. The guy on custmoer service might be at home naked, but the guy issuimg the loan definitly isnt
If some dude in swintrunks and flip-flops wants to loan me €400k when the trad banks wouldn't... I'm cool with that.
Missing the point but OK. Good luck discussing your mortgage typing on your phone.
It's about time the banks got a kick up their arse. Revolut will have to follow all regulations just as banks but their advantage is they don't waste their money on branches and personnel. Their technical infrastructure is their cost, all banks near that burden too.
What’s to discuss? The terms are all written there in the contract and I’m not an illiterate.
I'd prefer any important conversation be in text form with no place for ambiguity, incomprehension, mishearing or altering conditions after the fact
LOL. I am a contract manager, if anything is ambiguous, its written contracts.
From my experience meeting with a person in a branch is absolutely useless. Adds nothing of value to the process. If I hadn't had that experience I'd be thinking the same as you. But the banks as an entity see this as so transactional that I don't think there's any purpose to the physical meeting. The "we'll see what we can do for you" shtick doesn't fly with me.
Granted I'm living in the UK now but my mortgage is 100% digital. Applied and approved within hours (at the height of the UK mortgage rate issues last year) and I'm totally happy with everything being digital. I can see my payment schedules, additional payments, all documents, rates and even open additional savings accounts. Contrary to what you say I can speak to someone within minutes and can still call someone if I need. Not that I ever need to because I can self manage just about every aspect of the mortgage through the app (which is fantastic). It won't work for everyone but digital banking and digital mortgages by extension are absolutely the way forward for the majority of folk.
It's fascinating how some people will still defend the Irish banking system. Anyone who's ever lived anywhere else in the world knows full well that the Irish banks are still living in the 1980s and their websites/apps are a thin layer of paint over the top.
Thats what I mean though, at the moment the only way to contact Revolut is through the app in a chat, and its cumbersome.
Someone works in an Irish bank
Oh come off it. Just because I have my doubts, doesnt mean I work for a bank ffs. I just cant see myself applying for a mortgage through an app. I had to chat to BOI online for a mortgage and it is tedious, I just want to call a person and talk things through rather than waiting for a reply on chat a day later for each questions. Is all.
For a complex case you’re probably going through a broker anyway. For a simple case, there isn’t much in the way of questions. I suppose some fall in between, and there the traditional banks do have an advantage, yeah. I applied online for an AIB mortgage 8 years ago; I think the only times I had to talk to an actual person was when I had to go to a branch to give them copies of documents so that they could lose them (at the time they’d let you upload most docs, but there were a few where they wanted to take a photocopy themselves).
OK, well when I got my first mortgage, I was speaking to the bank for months on end. Fuck me, it was a lot of work. Maybe things changed, I dont know. This was also 7 years ago.
They’re just about the most locked-down, heavily regulated, pro-forma contract in the country. How the hell did you need several months for someone to walk you through it? This entire argument is giving off “I did Third Year four times, so obviously I understand it better than you clowns who only did it once” vibes
I got my first one in 1995, all i had to do was bring in 2 payslips and fill some forms, 4 pages of them. But then again, my first house cost £58k in kildare. My current car cost more
The process took long, lots of documentation, going back and forth, everything from first contact to having the keys in my hand, I wasnt talking about just the contract. And I am not taking any high road man. Just sharing my thoughts/experience.
People want their mortgage done fast, with the most favourable repayment plan, and with as few hurdles as possible. Dressing up to take forever to decide more information is needed to process an application is not a process that adds value to the experience of the applicant. That random dude can be naked for all I care if I can be told what I need to provide and get a decision in a fraction of the time.
The issue is chatting through your phone regarding a mortgage. I just want to speak to someone. I dont care if he is naked either. My point was, Revolut support are just users like you and me, they are not trained financial experts. Anyway, if they offer a good product and the sign up process is robust, I am interested. Just have my doubts.
The preference towards phonecalls is more of a gen X thing. Millennials and younger are noted as preferring typed methods of communication. Gen X is a bit late to the party if they're seeking mortgage at this stage. AI chat bots are more akin to IVR, so pointing at chat bots to discredit webchat support is dishonest when you ignore that we have been talking to prerecorded messages for decades.
Exactly. Why the f*** people want to talk to other people over the phone?
You are very wide of the mark if you think the people you are talking to over the phone or even in a branch are anything close to financial experts. A lot of them think they are too which is weird because the exams are ridiculously easy and they are trained to sell their financial product only. They are sales people nothing else. I cannot stress enough that they know fuck all. Source: I've designed and configured the interest rate curves that do the pricing for major banks in Europe and UK.
When I took out a mortgage 7 years ago I did it all online with AIB and didn’t talk to anyone through the whole process. The market is there for it, even though it might not suit everyone. Mortgage brokers are typically dealing with the people who need assistance, so their viewpoint is a bit biased
Yeah, I see something happening in this space. AIB/BOI get crucified when they want to close stores but new entrants don’t have to make any. Similarly as regards ATMs. I see legislation coming in to level the playing field. AIB/BOI are somewhat being forced to cater to their older, non IT savvy clients.
AIB/BOI have a massive advantage with a huge market share and general reluctance of people to switch. Never mind the huge capital and enormous profits. AIB/BOI choose to outsource and offshore their IT, all the while wrapping in countless layers of bureaucracy, politics and incompetence. Under no circumstance can we ever allow any politician to tip the scales further in their favour. Let the dinosaurs go extinct.
Have had a few personal loans via AIB app. The process takes 5-10 minutes and money is there.
Yeah tbh their online proceeses for loans/opening current account is straight forward if you re an existing client
>is planning to enter Irish mortgages next year yeah, this is an ad rates?
I have Revolut as a backup account, it's great, nice and fast, but there's a reason for that - they are effectively an internet bank. Things are changing for them, but as someone who works in banking, I certainly wouldn't put all my savings with them.
Why wouldn't you? They certainly offer the highest savings interest rate on the Irish market right now from what I can see.
Risk.
No different in risk to your money than a traditional bank.
Yes and no. With the LT bank accounts you are "covered" by the Lithuanian central bank with deposit insurance, but practically will that happen if Revolut went into default during a crisis? Hmm not so sure. Also most Irish banks are externally rated. Revolut is not rated. If there's any sort of crisis (internal or market) it could instantly fold, we just don't know enough about it's internals (for now).
Does revolut have an Irish bank now that your account sits in?
They have an Irish IBAN, but I'm pretty sure the account is still in Revolut Lithuania. And Lithuania does not have the money to bail out Revolut. The whole country would undoubtedly be bankrupted trying to. However, I could well see the EU stepping in because the risk to the banking industry if the deposit guarantee turns out not to be worth the paper it isn't written on is huge.
I wanted to get a loan with revolut, but it turns out you need an existing account with someone like BOI. If I need an account with BOI, why wouldn't I just get a loan with them? Plus, those accounts cost money. I went with a credit union instead, so it took longer but was pretty cheap. 6.5% APR over 3 years for 5000. Also, their car insurance is a joke. On my old car, it wasn't that much cheaper than Kenco, but it required me to have a very restrictive tracker installed. There's no option to not have the tracker. Even after 3 years of experience, the option still isn't there for me. I tried again with my new car and they wouldn't even give a quote, so fuck them, phoned a couple brokers and had a very solid quote in about 2 hours. Seriously, how the fuck do you disable "smart driving"? I've got 4 years no claims bonus, I don't need some twats tracking me to make sure I'm not 10 over the limit.
They will probably take back the houses that default as quick as they process everything else! All that glitters is not gold!
Load of Revolut shills in this thread who do not care about how awful their customer service is or how they close accounts without notice or information. When shit hits the fan and you cannot access your money let’s see how great Revolut are. /r/revolut I bet all the people gloating about loans and credit card were happy to take anything Revolut gave them because they wouldn’t get one at their bank and Revolut is riding them on interest rates. And I can’t wait to have something happen and need to talk to someone about my mortgage and getting nothing but a fucking chat bot. Good times.
But we are shafted from bailing out the banks, this can't be right
Myself and my wife made an appointment in our local AIB branch. We planned to open a joint current account and presumed it would be a simple process. We sat down with the staff member and explained what we wanted. He let a long exhale/sigh and said, 'just open a revolut account, it's much easier.' That was that