Australian Unity Active Saver

Australian Unity bank is the most inefficient and unworkable bank I have ever dealt with. Unable to use an account after opening it without physically going to the bank to be verified. Then when I wanted to withdraw my money to close the account I again had to attend the bank premises which is not local. Finally when I wanted to close my account I had to complete a bank closure form. Totally antiquated in this 21st century. Stay clear.

Freedom Saver Account new to AU application experience – This is about the new as of late Nov/early Dec 2023 Freedom Saver account they offered very briefly with a USP of "no deposit or withdrawal restrictions" and an interest rate of 5.5%, got absolutely flooded with applications and then promptly withdrew it again after a couple of days. I'm new to Aust Unity, so these are observations of a… Read more

completely new customer. First thing I notice is the complete and utter lie that is their USP. They loudly and repeatedly claim on their website "No deposit or withdrawal restrictions" with no qualifyng superscript numbers or asterisks or anything of the such. As soon as you go to make a withdrawal, you then find there's a $1,250 daily restriction on doing so. This is obviously a fairly big conflict. When you call and point out the lie, they squirm and weasel something about it only meaning the interest rate and not the daily limit. This of course is documented nowhere. You can get them to manually raise the limit permanently, but only to 20K/day, which does not suffice to cover the entire balance which has an upper limit of 50K if you want the 5.5% interest rate.

Second thing. They have obviously made a big mistake with the account offering and their estimation of how popular it woud be. They have closed applications after only a few days of being on the market due in their words to being overwhelmed with applications they can't handle the processing for. This miscalculation sews the seeds for a dramatic bait/switch to come once they get all the deposits from successful applicants and realise they've got far more funds than they need to cover their loan book. I will not be surprised if the 5.5% has one of the shortest shelf lives in Australian banking history, but this remains to be seen.

Thirdly: Perhaps related to being massively oversubscribed with account applications, they have rolled out a programme of contacting applicants and insisting they go through one of the most invasive, detailed, inefficient and cumbersome ID check processes ever seen from an Australian ADI. This is despite the applicant passing the verification process with flying colours and no questions during the online application. This is obviously designed to discourage applicants and make them either not proceed or withdraw their applications entirely rather than having to submit to selfie photos on phone as well as all the inconvenience of JoP certified and wet-signed posted paper ID documents. No, e-mailed documents will not be accepted, you cannot go to a post office, they have no branches you can go to and no other form of ID verification will be accepted at all.

It hasn't happened yet at time of writing, but I expect this account to have a very short life indeed. The withdrawal of applications just days after it was announced, the aggressive road blocks and hurdles being rolled out for compulsory ID checks to discourage applicants, and the restrictions on withdrawals where no restrictions at all should be, all together do not bode well for this concern.

Like Great Southern Bank I expect all their fraud tracking handling to be outsourced to Cuscal, which will mean all NPP/Osko payments will be blocked or take so long that it'll simply be quicker to use conventional BSB/Acc instead. This in itself is not a deal breaker for me because I'm not reliant upon Osko, but I know plenty of people are, so beware if you expect to use this account in such a way.

EDIT: As predicted above Australian Unity have done the bait/switch and lowered the 5.5% interest rate back down to 5.2% as of the new year. This means they grabbed the headlines and kept them for one month before caving. With their compulsory ID checks required by posting certified documents before they'll even open an account, it is almost impossible to open an account and shift money into it to get the 5.5% rate before they lower it to 5.2%. This has got to be the most underhanded bank move in recent history. To recap, Australian Unity engages in false advertising, delibertaely obstructive and privacy detrimental policies to delay account opening and then bait/switch tactics to deny what was promised in the false advertising.

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TRUST AUSTRALIAN UNITY FOR ANYTHING. ZERO STARS

Avoid this bank if you don't want your account to be locked – Firstly the sign up process for an account took 3 days, other banks could do it instantly. Then after my account was opened, I tried transferring money to my other account using Payid after multiple tries they locked my account. I called up the hotline, the person on the phone could not even unlock my account on the phone and told me to wait 24 to… Read more

48 hours for them to investigate the issue. So the next day I called again and the person on the phone told me I had to have the same payid email with Australian Unity as the payid email I am sending funds to, otherwise the transfer would fail. So I was forced to use BSB and account numbers for transfers. But no body had told me that before.

Seems like everything is done manually and prone to errors and the app is out of this world rudimentary.

Based on my experience with Australian Unity Bank, if you have different emails for different banks don't use PayID because transfers would fail. keep to BSB and account number transfers. Lastly sooner or later your account would be locked because of all the random "fraud protection measures". You call them up and it might take days or more to resolve the issues.

The 0.x% higher interest rate is not really worth it for me to go through all the hassles of dealing with Australian Unity bank.

Bank fails to deliver OSKO – I recently transferred $20k via the OSKO function, and instead of it being instant, it took over 24hrs to transfer. Next Day, same thing, then again the following week same thing. So I wrote to Aus Unity to ask why it doesn't work. I was asked to check that I had clicked OSKO, but if they had bothered to check the account they would have seen… Read more

that the transaction details specifies that it was an OSKO transfer. I replied again, telling them this, and they came back suggesting that the payment goes through when I reply to the SMS notification. Hmmm.... problem is that the transaction goes through with no prompt for an SMS code, it even says transaction complete and asks whether you want to make another payment..... so no prompt for any SMS. On their third attempt they stated that not having received a reply to the SMS (for which there was no request during the transfer) they hold payment for 24 hours then transfer anyway..... some security eh ?

So in summary the banks OSKO is very intermittent, and the bank themselves cant seem to explain why and don't even seem to know their own transfer systems ?

So if I were you and I need the efficiency and certainty of OSKO, move your funds, as they cannot be relied on.

Dodgy bank! Avoid! – I opened an online transaction and savings account but when I logged in I found that the account didn't have the correct account numbers against my name. This was both through their website and app. I found this out when I tried to deposit money into one of the accounts and the money didn't arrive in the account. So I phoned them and got through… Read more

to a rather incoherent customer service operator. He rambled on about how the real account numbers could be discovered through a complicated process on the online account page. I was alarmed by this and decided not to bank with them. I hope the deposit I made will not be lost.

Trying to steal money – I just put money on my card and they come back with a fraud transaction that my other bank let thru no worries and now they have locked my card my internet banking and there’s no branches to verify so they keep my money , be aware of this bank

Good Account, easy to set up – This is a good savings account, and you earn bonus interest rate if you deposit $250 per month and make no withdrawals. Its the equal highest rate for ongoing interest rate (ie exclude those with a 4 month honeymoon/promo rate). Easy to set up online. Good phone support if required.

COST ME MONEY - WASTE OF TIME – Unfortunately a complete waste of time and money! Australian unity had advertise a promotional rate of 1.75% for the active saver account... was attractive so I open an account and transferred all of my funds over... BUT after only 7 days later they reduce the rate to just 1.5% Are you serious? The promotional rate 1.75% was advertised on the… Read more

morning of the new date of the rate being reduced I don’t understand how this is allowed.

So I decided to remove my funds and put them with rabobank who is offering 2% a much better rate. So your daily limit is capped at a low limit so I had to pay a $30 fee to have my funds withdrawn otherwise it would’ve taken me weeks to transfer my funds out. But on that note if I had of started withdrawing I would not have been accruing any bonus interest for that month because you’re not allowed to make any withdrawals to qualify for the bonus interest.

The app doesn’t work, from day one I couldn’t login & after speaking to technical support and emailing through a screen image to show that there was no ability to login on any device it was expressed that the app had issues and was being repaired and somebody would contact me once this has been fixed, it never happened the app still doesn’t work even today. I was forced to navigate through Safari on my phone however this caused issues and somehow I manage to subscribe to something costing me a fee which was withdrawn from my account that I was unaware of.

So it’s a complete waste of time signing up for this account because the interest-rate will just be reduced and you’ll have to wait possibly days or weeks to transfer all your funds out unless you’re willing to pay the $30 fee that possibly more than the interest you’ll earn.

On a good note the customer service is outstanding very friendly and great communication from all the staff, a very good experience 100% satisfaction there. It’s just a shame Australian unity decided to have a promotional rate knowing very well they were going to be reducing the rate almost instantly I don’t understand how any banking Corporation can advertise a promotional rate the day before or the day of reducing the rate by so much.

So in the end it actually cost me money to bank with them. As much as the customer service was outstanding you don’t bank with a bank for just good customer service you bank with them to invest your money and in this instance I lost money so its my recommendation to others to avoid the same dramas that I had as I’m sure you’ll be just as disappointed as I am.