Has anyone been an account holder in a bank, savings and loan, credit union, or any other financial institution that has gone through a merger? I have a relative who seems to think her balance in her credit union account will be affected because the company has merged recently with another one.
It was a long time ago but I was with Norwest Bank when they merged/were bought out by Wells Fargo and nothing really happened. Had to start using Wells Fargo stuff but it was relatively seamless.
I have. The sum total of the changes I experienced was that I got a new account number, had a new website to go to to manage my account, I had a new place to go to make deposits, withdrawals or to use an ATM without a fee and I had to make new friends because the 4 folks who worked at my old CU (1 location & membership of less than 4000) are now amongst about 60 (at 4 branches locally & total membership in the hundreds of thousands).
My old CU was da bomb, but my new CU has been a breeze to deal with and I’m very happy with them.
I have and my experience was similar to Kimballkid’s and Snowboarder Bo’s. ETA: to be explicitly clear - my account balance was not affected at all.
It seems like in the 1990s, banks were merging every second. In fact, my memory of the 1990s is that I’d get a new bank and a new area code every 6 months.
Nothing really happened. I got a new ATM card to use with the acquiring bank, they’d send you a few letters letting you know the last day you could use your old checks and there was a brief day or so when bank by phone didn’t work. I think I only had a gym membership on autopay back then, so I had to update that.
Even if your relative never writes checks, I’d have him/her ask the acquiring bank for a free order of checks, just in case they need to write a check every now and then. Most banks charge a fortune for check orders and this is a good time to ask for a free one.
My original bank, Regions, was merged into Capital One. The only thing that changed was my account routing number. The account number and even the debit card number have always been the same.
My Visa card was originally issued by First USA Bank and I pay the monthly bill electronically from Citibank using a merchant code assigned to that bank, even though it merged into JP Morgan Chase Bank a few years ago.
I had ING since 2008 and when it switched to Capital One it was pretty seamless. No changes right away, but eventually ingdirect .com redirected to capitalone360 .com , the app got a facelift, and they sent us new cards in the mail. It wasn’t much different than when the same bank overhauls its website and sends you new debit cards. Sometimes when you log in you have to go through a walkthrough explaining new security features. For example, ING had this weird PIN number + passphrase + picture deal (easier than it sounds) and a few years back Capital One changed it to a normal username/password combo.
Needless to say, the money was safe and secure the whole time. Of course, the big perk I originally signed up with ING for, high interest savings, kind of fell by the wayside over the years, but that was happening before Capital One took over because of the recession. It started at like 2 or 3%, but now it’s basically nothing like all the rest. 0.76%, currently.
This is an online only bank though. I’ve never had another bank take over with a brick and mortar bank.
I still have my account number and routing number from National Bank of Detroit, which was bought by First Chicago to become BankOne, which was bought by JPM-Chase. The checks are still valid, too; I send them to various governments from time to time.
Actually, I lied about that. I’m still using checks from the old bank and the routing number is the same.
So, no changes at all.
My original bank, Washington Mutual, merged with Chase. My Paypal account still lists my WaMu account number and institution name, and my payments still come and go fine.
I went from Freedom Federal to Household Bank to Harris to BMO and nothing changed. Still have my old account number from the Freedom Federal days.
I’m with Chase via (working backwards) WaMu, Home, Great Western, and Household. My account number and routing number (IIRC) have remained consistent throughout, as have the terms of my free checking.
My bank was bought out by a bank that got bought out by a bank that got bought out.
Very little changed. Most properties of accounts (min. balance, fees, etc.) were grandfathered in. After the last buyout we continued to use our old checks for quite some time.
I keep my ATM card in the original sleeve from the first bank.
There can be effects: E.g., you have accounts at the maximum federally protected limits at two banks, they merge and go bankrupt. You are only officially protected on half the total now.
Someone should double check that the new bank hasn’t changed some fee or other aspect of the account so that no money gets drained away over time.
But short of something like that, the balance is nominally protected.
When one bank bought the other, helped by the FDIC, not even the account numbers changed. After a few months of transition I now have 2 accounts at one bank. I could transfer the money from one to the other and delete the extra account, but it is nice to have 2 accounts. That way I don’t spend it all at one time…
I manage another account at bank where I still have checks with the two generation old name of the bank on them (1990s bank, 2000s bank, 2010s bank). The check routing numbers still work.
I was out of the country when it happened. They sent me a letter saying there was a new identity. The new owners do not have an account of the type you had, so we are assigning you to a different type of accou that is best for you (read “us”). Instead of having no monthly charges, we are going to deduct $10 from your balance until a) your account is depleted, or b) you get back from South America and try to find us.
That has happened in one form or another three times. Now, when my little bank gets gobbled up, I immediately close my account, I won’t give the bastards a chance to sell me to the highest bidder.
As others have said, there will be some administrative changes. That happens *very *slowly with lots of mails & emails written in 2nd grader language to explain what accountholders need to do, if anything.
I’d like to talk about the bolded part. What does she think will happen and why? That her money will be stolen? Or misplaced? That her money will somehow be used to fund the purchase of the bank? Or what?
Its silly bordering on paranoid insanity to expect that (in a modern basically honest mostly well-regulated society) your money will simply disappear due to a bank merger.
This almost exactly word for word, except I’m not really sure how many branches my new CU has, but I know where all the ones are near my work, my route to and from work, or my house, and where my original CU was located. In fact it is now MORE convenient for me, I don’t have to drive clear across town.
Pretty much. I started with NBD (National Bank of Detroit) back in the mid-90s, which then became part of First Chicago, which then became part of Bank One, which then became part of Chase. This was in a span of ten years (1994-2004).
Absolutely nothing happened in terms of balances or anything like that. I don’t even think my account number changed. I assume there were some changes in terms of various fees and things like that, too. (Like ATM, foreign transaction, minimum balance, overdraft, etc.) But I can’t remember that part.
Ditto. More correctly, I think, WaMu had gone overboard with that bad mortgage shit in the late 2000’s and very suddenly went bust circa 2008. All the WaMu stockholders were wiped out. In a very hastily arranged deal, Chase bought up their assets (which I think means Chase got all the assets including existing customer accounts, but none of the liabilities). This was a good deal for Chase because it gave them an extensive ready-made presence on the west coast, which they had previously totally lacked.
All WaMu accounts became Chase accounts. The account numbers (at least mine) and routing number remain unchanged to this day. I still have some paper blank WaMu checks (because I hardly ever use them), but on the rare occasion that I’ve had to write a paper check, they still work just fine.