I'm surprised to hear this take. I find Chase to be the best bank I've ever worked with -- personal accounts, business accounts, everything. Customer service is top notch. Website is great. I'd love to hear your choices for a top retail bank.
Yes, i'm in the NY area, so true on branch location issue. But how often do you have to visit a branch if you have good systems? The branch is usually for when systems fail.
Not the best lending bank, and def not the best investment platform. I'm not sure why they cant be all three (organic or m&a) given the high synergy.
I fully agree with GP, my experiences with Chase have been quite poor even in the NYC region.
Ahead of buying a home in ~2015, I was holding a lot of cash, and Chase upgraded me to Chase Private Client. Seemed good at the time, perks like free museum visits and such, and they said I could retain the status for at least a year even after reducing my account balances.
Private Client sucked. My "private banker" was irritating at best. Constant sales pressure shilling their investment products, which had a 1% management fee, on top of being a basket of a hundred different actively-managed mutual funds which also had their own high fees. Hard pass.
I looked up my "private banker" on LinkedIn and he was literally a parking attendant at his previous role.
I moved out of NY not long after this, and switched out of Private Client, although I did keep a small amount in a lower Chase tier.
A while into the pandemic, I started getting emails from Chase about how "my local branch" was closing (always some random Chase location in Manhattan). Happened repeatedly for different branches, sometimes ones I'd only visited a single time while running errands somewhere in the city. This despite the fact that when I moved out of NY many years ago, I fully updated my address in Chase's systems, and they should surely know I do not live in NY anymore.
The best banks for most individuals are almost always small regional banks or credit unions.
The credit union I use has 7% lines of credit, mortgage rates that are consistently within 5 basis points of the lowest and average hold time to an agent <3m. But… their business banking is weak and it’s not really a good place for a high net worth person.
I think big banks tend to never be great customer experiences becuase the internal incentives aren’t there. Retail banking is a sales funnel, and why would a brilliant leader want to run retail? It would be a pay cut. The “brand name” of a major bank used to mean you could cash your checks anywhere, etc. that’s all dead.
The money lives at interactive brokers, the cash flows through etrade, wells Fargo has never met a mortgage it didn't want a piece of, and chase rents me a safe deposit box.
Yes, i'm in the NY area, so true on branch location issue. But how often do you have to visit a branch if you have good systems? The branch is usually for when systems fail.
Not the best lending bank, and def not the best investment platform. I'm not sure why they cant be all three (organic or m&a) given the high synergy.