UFB Direct, a DepositAccounts.com advertiser, serves customers nationwide who are looking for a way to get higher savings rates and lower fees on FDIC insured products by leveraging their Efficient Banking Platform ™. Skip the long lines at the branch, skip the traffic, do all of your banking by Internet, by telephone, and by mail – it saves the Bank money and those savings are passed on to you. In the end, you get one of the highest savings rates in the country, lower fees, better benefits, and you never have to go into a branch again!
Related Posts
7/24 - UFB Direct New Priority Savings And MMA
4/13 - On 4/13 UFB Direct Will No Longer Offer Preferred Money Market To New Customers.
3/25 - Raised Savings Rate To 5.02
3/14 - UFB Direct Preferred Savings and Money Market Are Now Rate Leaders
3/14 - UFB Direct Savings And MM Both 5.02%
2/23 - UFB Direct Adds New Rate-Leading Money Market And Savings Accounts
2/22 - New APY 4.55% - Leading Savings Rate In America
1/20 - UFB Direct MM & Savings APY Increased To 4.21%
1/20 - $100 UFB DIRECT SAVINGS BONUS
12/15 - UFB Direct New Best Money Market and Best Savings Are Rate Leaders
12/14 - MM And Saving APY 4.11%
12/1 - UFB Direct Ups Money Market and Savings Account Rates
11/10 - UFB Direct Adds New Rate-Leading Money Market and Savings Accounts
11/9 - UFB New High Rate Savings And MM Accounts 3.83%APY
10/13 - UFB Direct Ups Elite Money Market And Savings To 3.11%APY
10/1 - UFB Elite Savings Increased To 3.01%
9/27 - UFB Elite Savings 2.85%
8/16 - UFB Direct Unveils Rewards Money Market and Rewards Savings Account
8/11 - UFB Direct Ups Money Market And Savings Account Rates To 2.21% APY
7/15 - UFB Direct Boosts MMA and Savings Rates For Third Time In 4 Weeks
7/1 - UFB Direct Ups Money Market And Savings To 1.66% APY
6/24 - UFB Direct Adds New Savings and Money Market Accounts
6/17 - UFB Money Market & Savings Now 1.51%
6/9 - UFB Direct Cuts Savings And MM Rates From 1.51% To 1.35%
5/27 - UFB Lowers To 1.51% From 1.61%
5/19 - UFB Lowers Rates.
1/24/18 - UFB Direct Adds New High Yield Money Market
1/24/18 - UFB Paying 1.6% On Premium Savings & High Yield Money Market. But You Have To Ask,
1/3/18 - UFB Will Give 1.41% APY On Premium Savings Accounts If You Ask.
9/12/17 - UFB Direct Boosts Money Market Savings
9/7/17 - UFB Direct Raises Money Market Savings Rate To 1.41% APY
6/5/17 - Saving Account Up To 1.3% APY
5/3/17 - UFB Direct Adds New Premium Savings Account
1/29/16 - UFB Direct Dramatically Raises Rate On UFB Savings Account
1/29/16 - UFB Direct Savings 1.20%
5/20/15 - UFB Direct Cuts Savings Account Rate To 0.70%
3/16/15 - UFB Direct Cuts Savings Account Rate To 0.95%
3/2/15 - UFB Direct Cuts Top Savings Account Rate
10/9/14 - New High Savings Account Rate at UFB Direct
4/26/13 - UFB Direct Slashes Rates - What’s Going On at BofI Federal?
4/24/13 - Rate Drop At UFB Direct
11/20/12 - Another UFB Direct MMA Rate Cut - Future of BofI's Rewards Checking?
10/31/12 - Another Rate Cut at UFB Direct - Issues To Consider for Rate Chasers
10/10/12 - UFB Direct Money Market Rate Droped To %1.05
9/5/12 - UFB Direct Cuts Money Market Rate - Best Option for Savers?
9/4/12 - MM Rate Slashed At UFB effective 09/04/2012
8/6/12 - Another Money Market Rate Hike at UFB Direct
6/26/12 - UFB Direct Raises Money Market Account Rate
5/30/12 - UFB Direct Launches Money Market Savings Account with a Top Rate
2/28/12 - Another Rate Cut At UFB Direct - 0.85% To 0.80%
2/23/12 - Another Rate Cut at UFB Direct - Lessons for Rate Chasers?
2/13/12 - UFB Savings Droped Yet Again From 0.95% Down To 0.90%. Switching To Mybankingdirect Or Amtrustdirect.
2/7/12 - UFB Airline Rewards Savings Droped Again From 1.05% Down To 0.95%.
2/1/12 - UFB Direct Savings Account Yield Falls From 1.10% To 1.05%
1/18/12 - Rate Cut at UFB Direct - Savings Account Strategies in Today's Environment?
1/18/12 - UFB Direct Rate Drop From 1.30 To 1.10
9/16/11 - Nation's Top Savings Account Rate at Bank of Internet's UFB Direct
8/4/11 - Bank of Internet's New Airline Miles Rewards Savings & Checking Accounts
1/9/10 - UFB Direct's New 2% US Savings Account - How Long Will This Last?
6/22/09 - UFB Direct's No-Min Absolute Savings Account Still Holding at 5.31%
2/22/09 - UFB Direct Increases Yield on its Traveler's Savings Account to 4.00%
11/30/07 - UFB Direct Deposits FDIC Insured by Huntington and Countrywide
6/27/07 - UFB Direct Closes No-Min Savings and Starts New Tiered Savings Account
8/9/06 - CD Rates Go Down Again This Week at UFB Direct
8/1/06 - UFB Direct, Jumbo Money Market Rate Up But CD Rates Down
6/21/06 - 5.50% 1-year CDs Now at UFB Direct, M&T and Tranportation Alliance Banks
1/2/06 - UFB Direct Raisies Money Market Rates
11/2/05 - New CapOne/Costco and UFB Direct Money Market Rates
8/22/05 - The Deal at UFB Direct
After Rough Initial Seas, An Overall Positive Voyage So Far.
Warning: long/detailed review below.
So to echo some of the other reviewers here, I too was filled with a bit of trepidation aftering reading the mostly negative reviews across several different online venues(first on the app store for the UFB mobile banking app, then some of the bigger financial review sites like Nerdwallet and Gobankingrates and then finally here at DA) but because I'm a giant n00b when it comes to financial literacy/health, I'd already opened the account with UFB and started funding it $2k/day(because of reading via their app that their ACH limits for "new" accounts are that) at a time(had $8k funded at this point) so you can imagine the gnawing feeling in me tootsies as I kept reading. I'd only chosen UFB because their online application actually worked and was near painless and I was approved instantly as opposed to a few other banks I tried to open accounts with prior and which lost my business because of a mixture of poor site management/placement and bad coding behavior with their ID verification tool(s).
First the bad bits about UFB in my experience of 4+- months with them so far:
1.) There's confusing and contradictory information on their site/mobile app regarding ACH transfers inbound and out. The fine print speaks of a daily limit of $15k in/out OR $2k for "new" accounts. No time period is given as to when a new account is no longer considered so. Because of that information I at first had to schedule several multiples of daily ACH transfers(pulls as I'd later discover is the terminology) and these could only be done one at a time via the app(spent like an hour the first day doing that). After about four days, I noticed that the transactions showed up and updated the "total" but the "available" balance stayed at $0. As this was my first real foyer into account funding I started getting worried and started reading reviews about UFB and no prizes for guessing how that went.
1.5) After stopping all future ACH pulls, I sent a secure message to the UFB customer support team and waited and waited growing more nervous all the time. About four business days later(come to find out this the standard fare when messaging with them via the app's secure messaging), they replied that ACH transfers take 6 business days to clear but do start earning interest the day they're received. They also gave more confusing info on $ limits saying it's $50k per day and $100k/month and that one can ask for a temporary 72 hour increase on those limits of $150k/day and $400k/rolling 30 day period.
2.) Armed with this "knowledge", I attempted to set up an ACH pull of $10k and it failed the next day with no info given as to why. Also, you have to set up an ACH pull request before 11:00AM PST the business day before if you want it go through the next business day, otherwise it schedules for the second business day. All of this was news to me so as that first $10k attempt failed, I then had to wait until the following Tuesday to have a new attempt. That one also failed at $10k with no reason for the failure given in the auto eMail they send you. I then thought that the agent gave me the wrong info so setup more $2k transfers however since I had probably 5+ daily transfers already scheduled in the app, I just modified each one for $2k instead of $10k. All failed thus losing me another 7+ actual days(including weekends) of incredible frustration. At this point after much research online, I found that you can chat with a live person via their "Evo" chat assistant in the app by typing "speak to someone". The actual AI assistant "Evo" is frigging useless just like many a review here state. That live agent basically repeated what the secure messaging agent said and as these first level agents are all based on the Indian subcontinent, she didn't quite understand what I was telling her about the ACH transfers failing one after another with no reason given. She could see no reason and kept repeating that the limits are what I wrote above. At this point I'm quite unhappy and while this isn't their problem, I can only deal with all of this after I get off work at like 3:30PMish PST and we're not allowed to have our phones on us at my job so I'm basically incommunicado for 9+- hours daily. I decided to skip lunch the next day at work so I could try and call their customer service number and actually speak to someone and was on hold for nearly my entire break to finally get an agent and while this agent seemed to be US based and quite friendly and empathetic, couldn't tell me anything other than "just keep trying new transfers because I don't know why they're not working but we'll figure it out and don't get discouraged and just keep trying". All this is taking many days and almost 11 actual business days have now gone by with me only having funded the account with the first $8k and my frustration is now nearing boiling point. I attempt to send yet another secure message as yet another ACH pull fails with no info and this time writing something approaching the size of this review. Finally the agent gives me some correct info which is that due to a bug(s) in their app, once an ACH transfer request is initiated in the app, it should not be edited as making an edit to it will automatically cause it to fail the next business day that the system attempts to make it. This is written no where across UFB's digital spread.
3.) At this point having lost nearly 30 days of interest and getting worried that I'm missing the high APY wave as the Fed had just had that first meeting where they decided to not do another increase, I decided to initiate a wire from my funding Citibank account and eat the $25 fee that Citi charges to send the $48k I had in that account to the UFB one. At this point I'm almost breaking even as the partly interest on the $8k I had in the UFB account is near-depleted by the wire fee.
4.) As other reviewers have pointed out, UFB changes their account offerings/names on a seemingly arbitrary basis and as I write this they've renamed their offerings to start with the word Secure(Secure Savings/Secure Money Market). With the changes in offerings come changes in rate/APYs so as others have said, you've got to be proactive and log into the mobile app daily to see if your account's shown rate is matching their currently advertised rate. At this time it looks like the 5.25% APY is still their highest offer.
5.) Speaking of the rate, when I opened my account, the account offering was called Priority Savings and offered a 5.06 % APY. While reading reviews trying to deal with the issues above, I came across the fact that if your account is at a lower rate, you can ask UFB to bump you up to their highest offer at the time. I did so using the "speak to someone" option via Evo and the agent gave no push back at all and was very courteous and said the rate increase would take 48 business hours. It took like 2 hours and the account was set to 5.25%. However, and this'll be a controversial take, I've been diligently checking the interest $ amount posting daily on my total balance(this is after I've solved all of the "liquidity" issues I've referenced here throughout) and have had about 2.5 full months of a very similar $ amount on deposit(about $72.5k-$74.2k) and I am consistently not getting the full 5.12% rate advertised(I'm not discussing APY for obvious reasons). When doing the math, I'm averaging somewhere between 6 to 9ish basis points lower than I should be getting. I did chat in again with a live agent and had them confirm and reconfirm that I am indeed at 5.12% rate/5.25% APY, but it's just not adding up. We're talking about $.25 per day of interest difference and you might consider it insignificant but it's like $90/ year so buys me a tank of gas at least! I'm keeping a close eye on this as if the rate isn't what's being advertised, that's a massive and probably relationship-ending problem for me.
6.) Speaking of the mobile app, it "used" to be quite unstable and would crash over and over with random chance requiring constant log in and re-log in. One weekend, I actually locked my self out of the account because the app just wouldn't stop crashing out as soon as I'd attempt to choose any option inside it and I kept logging and re-logging in over and over. The latest app update(a week or so ago) seems to have helped quite a bit and I've only had two crashes since then(still seems to happen most often when tapping on different selections quickly while the app is still loading the previous request).
6.) I mentioned these in less detail above but the usual four business day response time via the secure message function in the app is frustrating when you're trying to resolve issues quickly. They are very friendly sounding and looks like the scrips they're using at least attempt to placate one while like any other CSR experience, it really matters which agent you get at random. Had that one agent not let me know of the app's bug with modifying already future scheduled ACH pulls making them automatically fail, I'd still be banging my head against a wall. Luckily there's a way around this and the next point which I'll touch base on in the positives. The other issue is the six business day processing/verification of incoming ACH pulls, which isn't a huge issue if you're using the savings account to just attempt to park funds and earn the rate but as UFB offers a free debit "card"(the "card" looks/feels like it was printed onto a 100lb cardstock) thus allowing the interpretation that the account can be used as a sort of checking/debit account hybrid, this poses a problem.
With the bad out of the way, here are positives in my experience with them:
1.) Their customer service agents are very friendly and empathetic and do seem to really try and want to help answer your queries and solve your issues. As others have noted, do not use the Evo AI assistant via the app/website, immediately ask to "speak to someone" for a live agent response. They also seem to be available 24/7 and I've tested this a few times because of my lack of communication ability on account of my job for a large part of a normal day, though at busy times, my longest wait time was about 70 minutes.
2.) Because they change their product offerings so often and this often includes a rate change as well, you can simply chat in with the live agent and ask for your account to be bumped up to the higher offered rate and they'll do it no questions asked. Your proactivity is a requisite.
3.) As I wrote above, the reason UFB won my business initially is because their website's application process was actually painless and worked the first time without any issues and approved me automatically; the whole process took about 20 minutes from start to finish. Didn't have to take picture of any IDs or selfies, just the standard entry of applicable identifying info in alpha-numeric format.
4.) Setting up an external account via the mobile app is also very easy and worked the first time with no glitches. I luckily chose the manual option so searched for the funding account I had at Citibank so didn't run into the issues that some reported of using the automated option and it not finding your wanted funding bank, even giants like Chase/Wells Fargo/Citi etc. After the obligatory two small deposits and refunds the account was verified and good to go. This is far easier than trying this same setup with Citibank as you cannot do it in their mobile app and have to use the Online portal, which of any of you have ever had the "pleasure" of using, you'll know it to be a god-forsaken travesty and has been for nearly 15 years now(Google some Reddit posts on this topic for sardonic comedy).
5.) As I just recently(last Thursday) discovered, a way around UFB's six business day "hold" on incoming ACH-pulls is to push funds into the account. I did so finally after wrestling with Citi's online portal and adding UFB as an external account to my profile and pushed about $1.4k on Thursday around 4:30PM PST, the money left Citi that same evening and showed up in my UFB account as AVAILABLE in less than 12 hours! A massive and much needed improvement on the six business days when pulling via UFB. Pushing funds from UFB also are beholden to the setup before 11:00AM PST and it goes out the following business day, but those funds so show up in the next business day or two to the receiving account, so still a lot better than UFB's pulls.
6.) As I wrote in the bad portion about "having" to wire in funds to UFB and pay Citi's $25 wire fee, one day as I was browsing UFB's site for any/all info, I stumbled on the fact that UFB will reimburse you for the incoming wire fee if you ask their CSRs and I sure did ask them via their Secure Messaging option and after their obligatory multi-day response time, they agreed to credit the $25 I paid Citi for the fee and the credit was posted in my UFB account in 24 business hours. I don't know if there's a limit on how many reimbursements per month/annum but it's a nice policy of theirs.
So overall in conclusion it's been a positive experience even though there's been many bumps along the way with combination of my own iniquity of knowledge of finance and UFB's actual policies and procedures. I'm still pretty miffed about the math seemingly not adding up on the interest gained and am actually working on another option, but that's slightly outside the scope of this post, and it's gone on long enough.
Thanks for reading if you've made it this far!
Current Rates For UFB Account.
I’ve had to open 4 accounts since march of 2023 to get the current high rates. Within the last week or two they dropped my rate from above 5% to 4.5% without notifying me. Their current advertised rate is 5.25% so another account was opened to get the current rate. I can’t say this is a professional way to act as a bank so I doubt I will be here long term. It’s been nice getting $450 a month in interest but with having over $100k in a bank I shouldn’t be playing these bait and switch games. I’ve had no issues with withdrawals but deposits take over a week+ to show up. Withdrawals take 2 days. If you don’t mind playing games and staying one step ahead of their nonsense with interest rates it’s a good return. I can’t believe it is legal to lower your rate while advertising and giving higher rates to newcomers. It just tells me whoever is running this bank is trash. I’ve made a couple grand in interest since march so it is legit if you stay ahead of their childish interest games.
Not Trustworthy
Be careful of their bait and switch. I signed up for a savings plan called "Preferred" Savings at over 5% APY. Months ago, my rate dropped to 4.5%. On 1.10.24, I checked their website, and their savings plan is at 5.25%, but it's called "Secure" Savings. Get this: they don't even offer a "Preferred" savings plan on their website anymore. When I contacted support, they said they would move me to the Secure plan at 5.25%.
Here's what I suspect they are doing. They entice you with a high-interest rate, then they eventually lower it. To entice more signups, they create a new savings plan with a high-interest rate. Tricky! I've decided to move my money elsewhere. Plus, their reviews are horrible - not worth it.
Don't Do It
The 5.25% high yield account sounds exciting and the bank is reviewed very well by financial news outlets, but don't do it.
The customer service is terrible and the UI of the site itself is very clunky. They've, without reason, sent random emails threatening to lock me out or close my account.
I've since moved my money to a trustworthy account and advise that you don't get yourself into business with these amateurs.
Health Grade Components
| Overall | |
|---|---|
| FDIC Certificate # | 35546 |
| Year Established | 2000 |
| Employees | 1227 |
| Primary Regulator | OCC |
| Profit Margin | |
|---|---|
| Return on Assets - YTD | 2.06% |
| Return on Equity - YTD | 21.04% |
| Annual Interest Income | $1.4B |
| Assets and Liabilities | ||
|---|---|---|
| Assets | Q4 2023vs Q4 2022 | $20.75B$17.89B |
| Loans | Q4 2023vs Q4 2022 | $17.43B$15.46B |
| Deposits | Q4 2023vs Q4 2022 | $18.3B$15.88B |
| Equity Capital | Q4 2023vs Q4 2022 | $2.08B$1.77B |
| Loan Loss Allowance | Q4 2023vs Q4 2022 | $176.8MM$157MM |
| Unbacked Noncurrent Loans | Q4 2023vs Q4 2022 | $154.3MM$95MM |
| Real Estate Owned | Q4 2023vs Q4 2022 | $5.6MM$4.4MM |