Intelligent Finance

Advantages: Low interest rates and besides you don't lose anything just by looking!!
Disadvantages: Obviously you are borrowing money which means debt but other than that - none really!!

Unintelligent would be the name for you if you didn’t at least consider looking at this site if you were looking for a loan, a mortgage, a credit card or somewhere to invest your savings and open an account. I stumbled across this site when I was checking out interest rates for loans so I thought I would give it a go. www.if.com is the site I got to where the layout is very simple and easy on the eye to look at. With it’s soothing colour ...
...informative and helpful. First you are taken to a plain simple page where you pick the service you require. You have a choice of Mortgage, Personal Loans, Credit Cards, Current Account and Savings. I went for the Personal Loan link. From here you are taken, rather quickly, to a page with information on, examples for you to read through and a Quick Quote option. There are links back to other plans you may wish to see at the top of the page you are ... Read review

Advantages: They gave me a Swtich card?!
Disadvantages: Been locked out their website too many times!

Intelligent Finance the bank that did say Yes, unlike many others who did not…. There was me, 27 with a Halifax account and no one anywhere would let me have a Switch card. See, me like many others out there when I as a young lass made some silly mistakes with credit cards and store cards and loans…. Need I continue? So, after paying my dues and living like a good girl for a long time, I was shocked time after time to be turned down by everyone ...
...general. Till one day my friend came to visit and recommended I try IF. I of course told him there was no way they would give me an account, after all they are linked to Halifax and they wouldn’t let me upgrade my account, so why would IF be any different? ‘Ah haaa’, he said. They will if you don’t have an overdraft. So, mockingly I went along with it and applied and to my disbelief they did accept me and let me have a current account. So, all was ... Read review

Advantages: good interest rates
Disadvantages: slow, inflexible, too many catches

What attracted me to IF.com was the interest rates. They compare very well and came out on top when I did a search using www.moneysupermarket.com (another one of my comments). However my experiences from applying to this moment in time are far from good. Apart from taking almost 3 weeks to open my original plan (a savings account that doesnt even require a credit check)the contact between IF and myself was particuarlly poor. For security they have ...
...to contact them. They dont accept ordinary emails. This is ok but it is time consuming and they reply is far from quick in coming. They do have a call me back facility on the web site but for the past 2 months it has been unavailable. I sent a message to them from the web site about this and another matter and 3 days later got a reply. Apart from not resolving my original query they also informed me that they had no idea when the facility might be ... Read review

Advantages: Good Online Software , Excellent Interest Rates
Disadvantages: Inconvenient for Cheques / Paying In

...have been a memebr of Intelligent Finance (I.F.)for around a year now and having spent so much of my time complaining about other banks I thought I should write something nice. I.F. are an entirely online bank and while they did start out as a subsidiary of Halifax are now entirely their own division. I point this out because I initially thought I could use the Halifax branches as their High Street "presence". This is pretty much not the case so ...
...to pay in you have to send it to I.F. head office. This is by far the most inconvenient thing and really this bank is only suitable if you have your main monthly income submitted to it. I would recommend opening a High Street account as well to deal with many of the igh Street things you still need. I switched my main account , personal loan (consolidation) , Credit Card and ISA to I.F. It is incredibly convenient to be able to switch between all ... Read review

Advantages: Good rates of interest, all products with one bank
Disadvantages: No high street branches

...but one that accepted was Intelligent Finance. I was, well to put it simply, chuffed to be accepted for my first credit card and decided to open a current and savings account at the same time. The Bank *********** Launched in 2000, Intelligent Finance is a web and phone based bank, so there are no high street branches. However, as a division of Halifax PLC they do have big name backing, which as I'm sure you realise, makes for piece of mind. ...
...The Products ***************** Intelligent Finance offers a number of financial products. MORTGAGES : There are four types of mortgage available. 1. Offset Mortgage - which gives you the chance to link your mortgage to your current account and savings, and “offset” the credit balance against your debit balance. This sounds complicated but means that instead of receiving interest on your savings, you will not pay interest on the equivalent amount ... Read review

Advantages: Competitive borrowing rates
Disadvantages: Woeful call centre expertise and supporting systems

...Style"). The result is that after a couple of years you are forced to go through the rigmarole of making an application for a further advance. This means you have to pay futher administration fees, and valuation fees. But the worst aspect of the whole thing is that IF simply need to be chased constantly. Your application gets stuck in the system and only a call from the account holder can unjam it. You get told that the application is waiting on a call to the account holder, but there is no mechanism actually to action anyone to make the call. It is desperately depressing talking to the first-name-only call centre staff as they seem to have the haziest idea about their own products. (updated on 14 July) I always refer to this bank as 'so called Intelligent Finance". Their customer service is truly awful. I began the process... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Competitive, Backed by Halifax, Excellent service
Disadvantages: early days

...I went to see a mortgage lender who was supposed to represent most of the lenders on the market. I was offered a ridiculously low borrowing amount and hastily started looking elsewhere. I looked on the net and quickly found that I could easily get £5000 more than was offered earlier. I then saw a recommendation for Intelligent Finance. I was advised that they were offering a very good mortgage deal by the Tesco.com mortgage supermarket and again in the Sunday Express. This led me to look into what the catches were. The low interest rate was a 1.5% reduction for 6 months then payments would return to normal at the variable standard rate of 6.1% The mortgage had no booking fee, no Lenders arrangement fee, no mortgage Indemnity premium, and a remaining fee of £150. The loan had no Loan conditions such as early redemption penalties... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Quick, simple, from the comfort of your own home.
Disadvantages: None.

...We bought our present home 4 years ago and like many people in the same position, we now have a house that is worth more than we could afford today. Of course, this means we can't afford to move to anywhere bigger. So of course it would be nice to free up some of that equity, without changing my monthly payments and for no more than an hour or so of my own time. And you can... I called Intelligent Finance (I know you can do it all online, but - and this is something that I want to stress - I.F. make this absolutely idiot proof) because I wanted to get the application right first time. A very pleasant lady walked me through the whole thing in about 20 minutes. On a Sunday afternoon. I needed to call her back about one piece of info that I could not lay my hands on immediately and left a message for her to call back - which she... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful