Looking for a bank that gives good interface. Willing to test-drive.

July 16, 2007 10:03 PM

In my quest to find the ideal combination of good interest rates + good online banking interface, my wife and I will likely be opening multiple banking accounts -- that's how we'll kick the tires. Will opening, say, four new accounts at one time damage our credit at all?

Actually, two questions:

1. Will this hurt our credit at all?
2. Suggestions on banks that offer BOTH high-interest checking + decent interface?

posted by diastematic to Work & Money (6 answers total)

The Fatwallet Finance forum has a lot of experts in this area. I believe they talk specificially about this kind of stuff and it's called a "hard pull" credit check vs a "soft pull" credit check. The hard one, AFAIK, is the bad one that gives you a hit. Most online savings don't seem to, but you can check there for specific accounts.

I also enjoy this Money Blog because it does very detailed reviews of online savings accounts.
posted by sharkfu at 10:18 PM on July 16, 2007

I have both ING Direct (savings (4.5%), checking (4%), and CDs (5.35%)) and HSBC (savings (5.05%)). HSBC pays more interest, but I hate its interface. I keep most of my liquid money in HSBC because of the rate, but I regularly transfer money from HSBC to ING for paying bills because the ING interface is great. So, keep in mind that in case you can't find the best of both worlds, it's very easy to do electronic transfers between banks. I have my ING account linked to both HSBC and my local brick & mortar bank, so maximizing my interest while minimizing my headaches has been really easy.

If you check out ING, be sure to use a referral from either a person or a newspaper/snail-mail flyer before opening an account so that you can get $25 free for opening a new account with a minimum of $250. If you don't have a referral, feel free to e-mail me (full disclosure: as an account holder I get $10 for referring anyone). Free money is pretty neat - I was disappointed when I found out about the referrals after I had already opened my account.
posted by gatorae at 11:29 PM on July 16, 2007

If you can't find a bank with an interface you like, just write your own.
posted by scalefree at 4:29 AM on July 17, 2007

It's increasingly common for banks to pull your credit report when opening a checking account, which has a slightly negative effect on your credit score in the short term. For a list of "guilty" banks, see this thread on Fatwallet.

Also, depending on how many banks you "test drive" in a short period of time, it might become difficult to open additional accounts for a while, since your ChexSystems report could look suspicious.
posted by Ø at 5:13 AM on July 17, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks all for your answers thus far. Scalefree, not sure what you mean. I joined Wesabe a few months ago, but haven't invested much time into it and I'm not sure I've been able to fully take advantage of all it has to offer. That said, I don't see anything in Wesabe about rolling your own bank or something similar. Could you clarify? Thanks.
posted by diastematic at 10:33 AM on July 17, 2007

I was referring to the interface. If you like a bank's offerings but not how it presents its data, you can use wesabe to create your own custom interface that suits your needs better.
posted by scalefree at 12:09 PM on July 17, 2007