[Jo and Andy]

Trying to sort out which bank account to start and same as UK it is a bit of minefield.

Any recommendations would be great.

Thanks

[sizzlingbadger]

Can't recommend ASB enough.

They have been fantastic and very prompt in helping us out. We now have a current account, savings account, mortgage and insurance with them.

Whenever my husband goes in to see them they're always friendly and more than willing to sort out any problems we have. :-)

[jubjub]

We went with ASB too. opened up a migrant banking account, so you get a sterling a/c based in UK and a dollar a/c based in NZ, easy to do transfers too, UK office is in London, and its know as Commonwealth Bank of Australia there...

http://www.asbbank.co.nz/story2721.asp

You can even do it by post before you come over.

Should have added, all banks seem to charge for doing pretty much anything, but you get free banking if you have a mortgage with them. We have managed to get our fees down from $20 plus to under $10 a month by using our ASB visa to buy most things, and paying it off once a month, cost 20c, instead of many lots of 20c for each eftpos transaction,

[Tara Sage]

Asb

[Timbo]

:nice1 Asb.
We set up a migrant account this afternoon, face to face with a young ladty by the name of Stacey at the London office.

[Miffy]

We are with West Pac.

Apart from the charges they are fine. Helpful in the branch with a good easy to use internet banking.

We also set up a migrant account from the UK and it was seemless to change over to an NZ current acount.

[GeorgeM]

We're with National Bank and they've been fine - hard to take to personal banking charges after the UK, but unfortunately there's not much to choose between any of them on this score. We pay a flat fee of $15 a month which covers everything - alternatively you do get free banking if you maintain a reasonable credit balance.

We have a BNZ credit card which again comes as shock because it isn't free. Applied on line, approved immediately and card arrived within 2 days. A while ago I had a problem with my card not being read 25% of the time, so phoned them and a replacement arrived within 2 days. NZ often seems to be very good for this sort of service. One gripe I have with BNZ is that I missed the cut-off date for transferring some of our rewards points to Air NZ air dollars and lost them. Despite spending a fortune with them they wouldn't budge on replacing them (they were worth over $200). One day I will switch from them because of this, but don't have time at the moment (the main reason I missed the fact that these things were dropping off the account).

I know that they're supposed to be trying very hard to turn things around, but ANZ have come bottom of the pile in customer satisfaction surveys for several years. (And have now taken over National Bank, so it remains to be seen if this will have a good effect on ANZ or a bad one on NBNZ).

If your banking needs are very simple Progressive Enterprises (I think) - the people who run PaknSave and New World have a supermarket bank going (provided, I think, by St George Bank in Australia). A bit like Tescos but on a smaller scale.

And I believe that Kiwibank, which operates through PostShops, is cheap on fees.

Finally (phew) I've heard good things said about PSIS.

[Carol]

We are with Westpac as hubby gets free accounts with them because he is an employee.
They are fine.

C

[Singel]

We are with National Bank, not just good service and also great mortgage deal.

[Moorf]

We're with National too - can't fault them, very obliging - will often "bend" rules to our advantage, no bank charges if you can maintain a balance of $5k, easy to commuicate with via the online banking "bank mail" where you can ask questions and receive immediate feedback on account queries (free of charge).

We're happy with them, and have our mortgage and credit cards with them too - although we will still shop around when we move house/mortgages - but isn't that just common sense?

Heard good reports re Kiwibank.. may investigate.

Hope that helps.

Moorf

[Avalon]

If you decide to go with ASB, could I suggest you try and get a lady called Stacey as your migrant banking officer in NZ and not Tafa. I know its been said on another thread, but Im not the only one who found her extremely unhelpful, whereas everyone raves about Stacy (inclusing my mum!). Whoever you go with, when you get settled you can transfer your account to your local branch whenever you need to, but I think it helps to have a friendly voice and attitude at the bank when you get here.

HTH

[jubjub]

We ended up with a kiwibank mortgage as it was the cheapest, even though they would give us free banking, they give no interest on the current account and even the interest account is a lower rate that the ASB, so we keep our money with ASB and the interest more than pays the charges, and just do a transfer to pay the mortgage. You get a feel for it a bit better once you are here, you just need to be a bit sneaky sometimes ;)