Shinsei Bank is the bombJune 24th, 2006 by Joe Jones |
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I don’t do product placement very often, but I must give the following rave review to my current bank, Shinsei Bank. If you’re in Japan, it’s the place to do your banking. Here are some of the many reasons why:
- You don’t get one of those goofy bank books. You get a card, hard plastic, embossed digits, in your choice of 32 colors (I picked the black one because it’s snooty; apparently the CEO of Shinsei feels the same way).
- They don’t dick around and mail it to you two weeks later like other banks do: they make it while you wait. Go to bank, fill out form, sit around for 15 minutes, and you’re good to deposit and withdraw at any ATM right away.
- In part because you don’t have a bank book, you also don’t need a seal; you can do everything with your signature.
- Your ATM card works everywhere: at the post office, at convenience stores, in Tokyo subway stations, and even overseas (and they pay you back for any ATM fees you’re charged out-of-network).
- At any other bank, you would have to mess around at the ATM to make a bank transfer. With Shinsei, it’s all online. None of those silly “furikomi cards” for frequent payees: the bank keeps your frequent payees online so you can send them money with one click. And your first x furikomis of the month are free.
- You can keep your savings account in any combination of major currencies. So if you’re pessimistic about the yen, you can keep half of your money in euros or Ozzie dollars or Swiss francs, and shuffle funds from one currency to another online in seconds. (If someone sends you dollars, you can deposit the dollars in your account as dollars and convert them to yen whenever you like.)
- In case you don’t know Japanese, everything is in English. I even got a concerned voice mail from customer service a few weeks ago:
Harrooooo…? This is Keiko from Shinsei Bank. I, ahhh, need to talk to you, about your account. Ahhh, I try you later. Baibai!
(Lest you be worried about going insane, customer service also speaks Japanese.)
Why is Shinsei so awesome? Probably because it’s run by gaijin. In case you missed the story, it used to be a highly leveraged long-term credit bank, before American investors bought it out, somehow tricked the Japanese government into relieving all its debt, and reformed it into a lean, mean commercial bank, in what might be the ultimate financial Gaijin Smash.
I guess that the only downside is that most of its branches are in foreigner-heavy areas in Tokyo, so if you live elsewhere you might have to hike to find one. But since everything’s online, you would rarely have to go into the bank anyway. (And if you do, there’s probably a Starbucks inside. And if you’re lucky, there might even be booze [the branch in Omotesando Hills has an Italian-style coffee stand selling limoncello]. Getting tanked at the bank is awesome.)
June 24th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Hm, getting tanked at the bank would suck, especially since the banks are allowed to sell insurance now. “Fuck it man, I’m just gonna convert all my savings to variable annuities! Woo!”
June 24th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Do they have the combined ATM/Visa card like SMBC? I got my yens in an SMBC account. I used to bank with Tokyo-Mitsubishi, then one day I was with a friend at the local SMBC branch, trying to sort out a problem, and I couldn’t believe the service! They bent over backwards for him, breaking all kinds of “rules”. The next week I took all my money there.
SMBC has everything online (no bank books), great security, awesome service and wicked cards. But having everything in English, and being able to bank major currencies is appealing. Gonna have to check them out.
June 24th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Better watch what you write about Japanese banks – some employee could read “Shinsei is the bomb” and misinterpret it as a threat
June 24th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
Okay, there’s a downside: the ATM cards (at least the default ones) don’t work as debit cards. On the other hand, they work in basically any cash machine in the world, for FREE! So I don’t miss the debit card function too much.
But yeah, I’ve heard Very Bad Things about MUTFJ or however the hell it’s abbreviated now. Probably best to steer clear of them. (One of my friends has his money in a Mitsubishi passbook that he can’t even read. Sheesh.)
June 24th, 2006 at 11:26 pm
I actually have to open a bank account RIGHT after I move into my apartment in a few more days, so this may be pretty helpful. On the other hand, there only one branch in Kyoto- still think it would be worth it?
June 25th, 2006 at 3:12 am
I’ve also heard bad things about Mitsubishi Tokyo UFJ Bank, but I’ve been using them since it was just Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank, and have never had a single problem. But the concept of doing transfers online is beautiful. I may have to make an account just because.
I wonder if I can get a credit card so I can purchase from the Japanese iTunes Music Store. Somehow it knows my Debit Card is American and I can’t make an account on the Japanese version
June 25th, 2006 at 3:19 am
Although I don’t have a Japanese credit card myself, I’ve heard from some sources that the easiest way to do it is to get a card through a department store. Apparently Saison and some of the other companies don’t mind giving low-limit credit cards to foreigners with no history in Japan. I still haven’t bothered, though, because my US cards are enough and Tsutaya is almost as convenient as iTunes (no DRM, either!)
June 25th, 2006 at 4:00 am
Yea, I have a Marui ‘credit card’, but they wouldn’t give me a real credit card that I can use outside of the store because I don’t have any (credit) history. They told me if I’m a good little boy for a year or so I can go back and get my card changed into a real credit card.
June 25th, 2006 at 7:15 am
I chose a purple card because I had thought that only purple was a color of luck. I think that I rise to wealth. (This is an awful misunderstanding. )The Kyoto branch is in the drugstore. Therefore, I come to be able to do nothing but buy cosmetics after lowering the deposit.
July 3rd, 2006 at 12:53 am
Here’s something else for Shinsei: you send them your address and they send you the forms you need to open an account by mail you don’t even have to rush to make banker’s hours! My forms just got here, so as soon as I can get my gaijin registration certificate in a day or two more I’ll just send one over to them and then get my cash card and online banking info in the post, and have my employer deposit my salary into their account—all without ever having to actually visit the bank even once!
July 6th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
send joe’s comments to the bank president and see how he likes this racist trash
July 6th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
President Porte is too busy doing the gaijin smash to worry about racism!
One thing that Shinsei has going for it is that it was essentially built from scratch in 2000, in the midst of the information age, and it’s been adept at attracting all sorts of global talent, not just at the top level.
This interview with one of Shinsei’s IT leaders gives an idea of why they are so far ahead of the game in the technology dept:
http://www.japaninc.net/article.php?articleID=140&page=1
July 25th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
I just sent my application to open an account by MAIL! How awesome is that?
I had to go with the Royal Grey color for my bank card. After all, it is named after me.
August 13th, 2006 at 3:02 am
I’d like to change bank from SMBC, as they don’t provide English info or communications). But some questions are still not answered:
a) Do they offer VISA cards? (I currently have a SMBC Visa Card)
b) Do they offer highway cards (my highway card was given to me for free by SMBC, and the highway fee is drawn monthly from my account, very practical)
c) Do they offer travel insurance? My SMBC Visa card offers annual travel insurance so I donøt need to purchase one for each trip. It’s very practical.
I also consider Citibank, but would like advice. Any other English language banks I should consider?
Kei