It's a Telephone Bank in the UK, launched in 1989 and I became a customer a year or three after that. Because it doesn't have any branches its call centre staff have to be trained to handle absolutely anything - if they can't fix it then it won't get fixed.
I found it because my father used it, I have no idea why, he was not ordinarily a man to favour technologically sophisticated solutions, he never owned his own email address for example. Maybe as a working man he found it frustrating that other banks were closed after hours? First Direct is never closed, it operates 24/7. I have used other banks for some things, but I've always kept accounts with First Direct because of their truly extraordinary customer service hence I call it the "good bank". I actually know one of their Founders and apparently that commitment to customer service was key to their original vision for the bank, he led a strategy session for the start-up where I work now and it used that vision to give us a worked example. He was Chairman at another start-up I've worked for too. Small world.
For the buying a home part I do mean that I bought it outright by the way, there wasn't a mortgage or anything like that - so that's a lot of money, let's say six figures. I presume the precaution was triggered by the fact that I wanted to move this large sum (almost all the money I had) to an account I'd never sent any money to before. Sounds almost exactly like a scam.
I would _like_ to believe any other bank would have similar protections - but of course I don't buy a home every day, so I have no other examples to compare, and most of my contemporaries have a mortgage so the very large sums aren't involved.
The password when they call me thing was nice, to be honest they didn't proactively set that up. I suggested it off-handedly one day and they were like "Of course, yes, we can set that up". I presume it's not custom, just they didn't explicitly advertise it to me as an option. That happens a lot, I didn't want contactless on my new card recently, and they were like "Yup, of course, done. Replacements for this card will also not have contactless until you call to change that".
It's a Telephone Bank in the UK, launched in 1989 and I became a customer a year or three after that. Because it doesn't have any branches its call centre staff have to be trained to handle absolutely anything - if they can't fix it then it won't get fixed.
I found it because my father used it, I have no idea why, he was not ordinarily a man to favour technologically sophisticated solutions, he never owned his own email address for example. Maybe as a working man he found it frustrating that other banks were closed after hours? First Direct is never closed, it operates 24/7. I have used other banks for some things, but I've always kept accounts with First Direct because of their truly extraordinary customer service hence I call it the "good bank". I actually know one of their Founders and apparently that commitment to customer service was key to their original vision for the bank, he led a strategy session for the start-up where I work now and it used that vision to give us a worked example. He was Chairman at another start-up I've worked for too. Small world.
For the buying a home part I do mean that I bought it outright by the way, there wasn't a mortgage or anything like that - so that's a lot of money, let's say six figures. I presume the precaution was triggered by the fact that I wanted to move this large sum (almost all the money I had) to an account I'd never sent any money to before. Sounds almost exactly like a scam.
I would _like_ to believe any other bank would have similar protections - but of course I don't buy a home every day, so I have no other examples to compare, and most of my contemporaries have a mortgage so the very large sums aren't involved.
The password when they call me thing was nice, to be honest they didn't proactively set that up. I suggested it off-handedly one day and they were like "Of course, yes, we can set that up". I presume it's not custom, just they didn't explicitly advertise it to me as an option. That happens a lot, I didn't want contactless on my new card recently, and they were like "Yup, of course, done. Replacements for this card will also not have contactless until you call to change that".