First Republic Bank

First Republic Investment Management is owned by First Republic Bank. The Investment Management group totally mismanaged my I.R.A. and brokerage accounts, drastically under performing the market, giving me losses over half the time in specific years on specific accounts, and put me in ETF's, mutual funds, bonds and stocks that at best, the bulk had no more than a mediocre Morningstar rating and most had below average Morningstar ratings. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS COMPANY TO MY WORST ENEMY.

5 star for day to day banking, 1 star for personal line of credit. I'm a mortgage lender, I work in this world every day. I need a personal line of credit and was offered to apply by my banker. My wife and I have a very low DTI (only our mortgage and a credit card) , 770 credit and close to 6 figures in liquid assets. Yet we were denied. Seems like these 'offers' First Republic have are just for high net worth clients, and are impossible to qualify for 95% of the population.

We started using First Republic Bank when we needed a construction loan during the 2008 Great Recession/economic melt-down. A friend suggested using a regional bank since Chase and Wells were not lending for construction loans at that moment. First Republic took a chance on us and we successfully worked with them to build our house.

FRB is known as a bank for high wealth people, but despite being moderate income we have always been treated well and experienced excellent service. It may be that our branch is in a smaller market and they are able to provide more individual attention, but we actually do have access to a personal banker who has been responsive to us. Our most recent mortgage refi was with FRB and it was quick and relatively painless, without unreasonable documentation demands. They provide outstanding phone service and free consultation about online security. I have friends who also use FRB and I have never heard anything bad about them except that their deposit interest rates for savings and checking are only OK and don't compete with online banks, which is understandable because they have higher overhead. I am perplexed by the reviewers who say that FRB provides bad service.

A pretty awful experience so far. They say all the right things and promise you personalized support. And the people are nice. But they keep messing up. They failed to make a mortgage payment for me in October. And then over corrected at the end of the month by making that payment and the November payment which was correct, and then THREE additional full mortgage payments. When I asked them to try and correct it they told me to contact my mortgage company and see if that company could reverse the charges. No additional assistance available. I’m not sure if this was a technology issue or what. But they seem inept.

First Republic is a terrible lender. Allowed a terrible appraiser to ruin a perfectly good deal. No consideration for client. BAD!

Up nosy bank that cancels customers for no reason stay away from it. Glimmer in their eyes of you have a movie payout and comes in.but hate normal customers.

I have been a business and banking customer of first republics for about 10 years.

With all of my clients' setup for paying us to our 1st rep business account, it has made it extremely time consuming to change accounts - and that is the main reason we have been with them for so long.

In my last 9 years, I have moved about 250-500k of money thru the account annually = A small business.

Beware :

1. 1st republic does not have 24 hr service.
Good luck trying to do banking from outside the USA, in an emergency from hong kong - I was not able to access my accounts either on the personal OR business side. Thank god I was able to get to an HSBC account.

2. 1st republic does not care that you are a fluid business - good luck trying to get a credit line. Even if you make 896K a year and over 700 score - sorry no help for a business line. Once you are over 2 million these problems I hear do not exist for this small business bank.

3. 1st republic charges fees for just about everything except (atm charges). Balance limits, no overdraft protection, outgoing wires, stop ach's.

4. 1st republic will take up to 2 weeks to respond to you - well that is if you reach out to "your" banker at a branch. The online support is great - again if you can get to them.

5. 1st republic does maintenance on their online system and has numerous problems with their apps and online banking.

One evening checking my account from bed, I watched 158,000 dollars disappear from my accounts. Stating ZERO dollars.

This ws not years ago - this was OCTOBER 2018.

So I tried to get in touch with someone - nope you guessed it. No one was available. The money reappeared the next day in my account - so sorry my banker said.

6. 1st republic does not handle fraudulent ACH draws from your account in a timely fashion - nor will they credit you back while investigating.
200$ per month since August has been getting drawn from my business account - contacted the vendor - put a Ach stop.
Keeps getting pulled.

1st republic's solution - first off being unresponsive. 2nd telling me there is no way to stop the draw. Then to advise the best solution is to close the account.

Not to mention the outdated bankers and banker demeanor - this is not 1980. Companies need to be responsive, small business owners and their employees depend on their banking relationship.

That last solution is by far the best solution = close the accounts.

This is an average bank for mortgage, CD, checking and saving accounts. My husband and I have a joint account. The staff are kind, courteous, and have poor attention to details. First, they got my social security number wrong although I already made the correction on the mortgage paperwork. Second, they failed to update my address and phone number for years although I gave my updated information online, on the phone, and in person for over 10 times. They only updated my husband's info. In joint accounts at First Republic bank, there is a profile for husband (primary person) and another for wife (secondary person); the information do not auto-populate and the staff did not pay attention. Third, their staff mistakenly changed my address while the change was meant for a different member. It took them a week to investigate and correct. Afterward, it took them another week to update my home address and phone number after numerous calls, online requests and a walk-in.
Furthermore, they have a poor computer system that has been spitting up transactions in double. For example, water bill and an external money transfer appear twice this morning. Similar computer cliche happened four months ago. Progress!?!
Why are we here? Because we can leave $5000 in the ATM rebate checking account. The debit card allows international and national ATM withdrawals without service fee and without international transaction fee. Because we need cash out in certain denominations (quarters, hundreds, etc.) once a year. Because we can get free notary public (only used once in 6.6 years). Maybe it's not worth it. But Chase and BoA are even worse for us. So we are with First Republic Bank due to the lack of imagination and mental laziness. Too lazy to look for yet another local bank in San Francisco with free ATM withdrawals and zero foreign transaction fees/international transaction fees.

Great personalized service every time and there is hardly ever any wait. They refund the fees from any ATM worldwide. Haven't had any issues with them in 8 years. A perfect bank as long as there is a branch near you.