Considerations While Opening a Bank Account
Go through the below points and discover the perfect bank for saving your money.
Bank's Reliability
One of the foremost points to look out for may be the bank's trustworthiness. Since you plan to deposit your hard-earned savings using the bank, it is essential to know that your money is safe and sound with the institution you plan to bank with. You have to make a background check of the bank and discover if the bank has all the necessary certifications to operate. You may go online and check the Internet database for degree of customer satisfaction pertaining to the bank's reliability.
Maintenance associated with Balance
Whenever you are approached for opening a new account having a bank, check if the bank's policies offer you the facility of zero balance maintenance. It is often realized that a bank may offer zero balance facility for the very first year of holding the bank account only. Subsequently, because your account becomes older, they revert certain rules and expect you to definitely maintain at least a certain minimum amount of dollars within the account. These rules for balance maintenance change from bank to bank in addition to for each type of account. At times, these rules change annually too. As an alert customer, you should get a written group of rules pertaining to balance maintenance before you open your account. Remember, if you fail to maintain the prescribed balance, your account might be levied with certain charges.
Financial institution Charges
There is no service in this world that comes cost free and that goes for banking too. There is usually a printed charge schedule obtainable in every bank. You can find out if the bank charges money for issuing a brand new check book, debits cards, etc. Similarly, some banks cost dearly for returning of bounced checks, stop payments, for issuance of statements along with other service charges. You need to collect charge schedule of competing banks to see if the banks are charging competitive rates or not really. Often, you can meet the bank's manager and talk about certain terms with him. e. g. If you avail of multiple accounts or promise to maintain a huge balance with bank, then chances are that you could negotiate with the manager for a waiver of costs and charges.
Banking Stationery Kit
It is essential to understand what all is contained in the banking kit that customers are given when the accounts is opened. Here you need to be aware that the normal kit contains the bank's check book and the debit card. Nowadays, owing to tremendous competition, banks also offer additional bits of stationery in their kit. Make sure to find out if the bank provides a free credit card or discount coupons along with all of those other stationery kit.
Banking Facilities
Banks don't just offer you a merchant account to save your money. They in fact, offer a number of other facilities like home banking, online banking, foreign currency or forex services, loans and advances, investment advisory providers, safe deposit vaults, etc. You can go online and look for the bank's rating with terms to these facilities. The banks are also rated with regards to their customer service quality, efficiency of banking staff and so on. An important point to be checked is that from the bank's phishing attacks record. Phishing attacks refer to the fraudulent transfer of money through online banking facility because of insecure online banking facilities. You may also find out information about the processing time taken by a bank for fulfilling your service requests generally.
Interest Paid
An important and crucial reason for saving cash in a bank is to get monetary returns or even interest against it. The banks have a policy to pay for interest on certain types of accounts only. Also, the interest rate applicable on your savings change with every bank's plan and extent of balance maintenance. As alert customers, you have to find out the rate of interest you are liable to receive combined with the monthly date on which bank's interest become due.
Closeness of Bank
Often, prospective customers are approached by the marketing team of the bank and coaxed to banking account with them. Stage is, your bank should be conveniently located near your house or your workplace. It is pointless to open a banking account in a totally different city or a far away suburb. If you have no option but to open this account, then find out if you can operate the account from every other branches of the bank as per your convenience.
Opening an account is usually a long time relationship between a bank and it's client. Over a period of time, your account gets attached to various other facilities like Paypal, electronic auto debits, expenses payments, etc. It is, therefore, essential to be wise and choose the best banking relationship from the beginning.