FNB = bureaucratic, inefficient and becoming tedious to work with

I feel like FNB makes me write a complaint about their private suit service annually.

Here I go again.

I moved my homeloan over from Absa in November 2023 - my agreement with FNB is for a flexibond so that I can access in excess money that i transfer - quite basic.

Fast forward 6 months, I transfer some extra money into my homeloan account and of course I can't see the balance because somewhere during the registration process someone did not choose the flexi bond option - I submitted this query on 11 June.

Fine.... let me move on.

I'm requested to fill in a whole application form again - repeating all the details on the form that FNB already has about me and the situation because 1) it is in the application I submitted to transfer my bond and 2) I have been banking with them for 10 years - do they really not know my gender, race, language preference, address, contact number, email address by this point?

Fine - I oblige and send it back to my private banker by lunch time and use this as an opportunity to also enquiry about the additional loan for upgrades that was stipulated in the offer....guess what? I need to fill in another form, with exactly the same information again and to submit exactly the same documents (payslips etc) as I recently did with my vehicle application that I recently submitted. So no one is thinking - hey, this is the same person applying for different products, why not just make a form for the specific product? Surely there is some automated option that can populate the documents with my information already and I just fill in the missing bits as opposed to making me endure a burden of admin - something that I never associated FNB with but now they are just as bureaucratic as any other bank.

Moving on - the next day my private banker informs me that I missed one of the 5 consent check boxes. Now because they don't make use of a simple e-signature application, it is now up to me to remember to download the pdf, tick the box, save the pdf and then send it back.

On 21June I finally get to this admin and send the picture on whatsapp to my private banker - to which she does not respond or even action. My private banker's assistant however sent me an email on 21 June (coincidently) to ask if she can tick the box on my behalf - which I would have gladly agreed to if it was actually just part of the original response when they noticed the box is unticked? I completely missed this email.

On 25 June i noticed that my private banker has still not responded, so I send the email to the banker and her assistant and the assistant informs me that it should take about 3 to 5 business days.

5 business days later - I follow up

Another 2 business days later still no response from my banking team and I can still not access the funds I transferred into the bond account.

Can my next conversation with the bank be what I need to do to downgrade. I am not getting any value from the "Private Banking" service.

Either a downgrade or i am starting the process to move all my stuff over to investec