I'll second Bullwinkle's comments that they are all the same. Sometimes your (you & the banks) needs match {SWEET}, but most times they don't.
As a wee tacker, I started with The Commonwealth Bank with my halfpenny deposits each week when the bank staff actually came around to your school. Gave that passbook account up when I left school. Switched to the Bank of NSW as they had a branch in our suburb and offered better interest on term deposits. That became the Wales and then Westpac(?).
When we were married, we found a little starter house that we wanted to buy and went bank shopping.
First NAB as The Boss banked there and her daddy had done so before her. That was shove off as we are not doing home loans atm. So she no longer banks there.
So we go to Westpac and the fact that The Boss kept her own name pissed him(the acting branch manager) off and he said No. He pissed The Boss off so much that she wrote a letter of complaint and the next thing we know is he was selling used cars down the road from where we were looking to buy.
Hmm, stumped, let's try around the corner at St George Building Society. Go for the interview and ask for $XK and um he starts going "are you sure" and we are thinking Oh Crap, not them tooo, but he continues "You can have $6XK*. Quick conflab and No Thank You, just the $XK will be fine thank you. Turned out to be a very wise move as interest rates hit 17% a year later. We both moved our accounts to there.
They came to the party when we wanted to rejig the home loan to withdraw a pile of our advanced payments to firstly do up the bathroom and then finally the kitchen. If i remember correctly, they were the first to do that.
Along the way they changed to a bank, then floated themselves. I think I got a 5c refund on my members share of $20(?), the bastards. So I made them pay it out to me.
Along the way, the business account was set up at Westpac as St George didn't do business accounts then. Also, Westpac now charge a smaller fee for our business account, than the fee they (StG) rorted out of our original home loan account and a community group account that I managed there($800 bucks up the spout there).
When it was time to buy an investment property, St George said they were not interested in investment properties, so we approached NRMA building society and they were happy to loan us the money. When NRMA was shafted by their self serving board members, that was sold to HSBC so they could have an Australian Banking licence(sp?).
They were quiet happy recently to rejig the principal& interest loan to an interest only loan (max credit at the inflated original amount) so we could do some work (new kitchen) on the investment property and whatever else we want to write a cheque for.
Hint there where we have taken our vehicle loans from.
The Boss also has a Credit Union accounts, which she is happy with. You have to be or have been one to join it, so i won't mention it.
So no Australian bank has ever loaned us money, so screw them.
