Are account holders with a bank better able to receive a loan from that bank?
"Banks are businesses, and as such should have the right to refuse service, so they should probably be able to choose one customer over another at will.   [I say ""should"" because business owners protecting themselves against litigation related to discrimination could restrict their freedom as business owners.] However, banks are businesses and if the customers are identical, both will be approved (or not) according to credit records.  Does not make sense to approve one person with a given credit record and refuse someone with a similar record.  Unless they barely qualify.  Since no two credit histories are identical, there are surely edge cases. Finally, if a customer is a long term customer with large deposits and/or significant amounts of business with the bank, the bankers will likely be inclined to do more business."
Someone online asking for your bank account info never has your best interests at heart. They can send you a check and while it may take a while to really clear, they can't use it to suck money out of your account. Be very cautious. Depending what country you are from, there may be better alternatives to transfer money internationally. Opening a bank account is complicated, costs money, and international bank transfers are remarkably expensive. It still does not address the difference in risk between lending to a large bank that must meet reserve requirements and between lending to more risky parties.  And is borrowing from BOJ to buy U.S. treasuries a bad thing if there is rate arbitrage? Usually problems like what you're running into mean that the megabank hasn't finished digesting acquisitions, or they cannot meet some state regulatory issue with the main system. Bank of America is/was like this for a few years -- tellers had access to separate Fleet Bank, BankSouth and BoA systems, but you as customer got stuck when doing seemingly routine transactions. You're probably in a situation where your older accounts are in System A, and the newer ones are in recently acquired System B. You should be able to avoid this problem by opening new accounts at Citibank, or just getting another bank. If you have a good rapport with a branch manager, explain the situation and see if they can do anything. FWIW, Unless you're spending alot of time in Manhattan or travel overseas often, there aren't many advantages to having a Citibank account these days. I'd say it's a limitation of your bank. Every bank I've ever used had instant transfers between accounts at the same bank. A bank is putting money on the line for you when they loan you money, which is not something they have to do. Not telling them what you intend to do with the money they are giving you, when asked, is fraud, which if you are caught will put you into very deep trouble. they may be willing to issue mortgages with smaller deposits, but may take longer to make a decision That cannot be farther from the truth. If you are getting a mortgage on a smaller deposit, you will be paying a higher interest rate. Time to take a decision depends very much on your credit situation, earnings, spending and the amount of loan you want to avail of. advantages and disadvantages compared to banks today Nothing specifically that is obvious. You deposits are guaranteed by FSCS, which is primarily everybody's biggest concern. One thing I did observe was they generally have saving accounts which pay better than the big banks, but that is for one to compare and find out.  In ownership structure you own a part of the building society because you are a member by having an account(bank/mortgage) with them. Not the case with a big bank though unless you own any shares. You can make a case for the difference of the big bank's multiple business as compared to a building society. "If ""Bank of America"" is truly a hard-and-fast requirement, the best solution is to go to a branch and see what they can do. If they turn you down, it likely can't be done." Yes.  In the US these are called certificates of deposit or savings accounts.  Every run-of-the-mill bank offers them.  You give the bank money and in return they pay you an interest rate that is some fraction of or (negative) offset from the returns they expect to make from your money. Since most investments that a bank makes (say, loaning money to a local business) are themselves based on some multiple of or (positive) offset from the prime rate, in return the interest rate that they offer you is also mathematically based on the prime rate. You can find lists of banks offering the best returns on CDs or savings accounts at sites like BankRate. The answer lies entirely with how the loan paperwork reads. The way I'd set it up, there's would need to be a large enough downpayment so the bank was willing to offer a loan strictly to the LLC with non-recourse to the members. "To add in a brief expansion to Portman's complete answer.  The payment can also be thought of as compensation for your ""switching cost"".  Obviously it is inconvenient to transfer your account from one bank to another (changing static payments, stationery, that sort of thing).  The cash is offered as payment towards that inconvenience.   Given the profits that banks make you can think of the $100 in much the same way as a store offering you a 5% discount on your next shopping trip." A bank can reject a loan if they feel you do not meet the eligibility criteria.  You can talk to few banks and find out. This depends on the practise and applications available with the Beneficiary Bank. For a corporate customer, the details are show. For Retail customers they are generally not shown. Allowing others to share access to your Bank Account; i.e. giving then the login id and password has its risks; I'd add that bigger banks tend to have experience doing more complicated things. As an example, my local credit union (~12 offices), simply didn't have the software to wire money to a Canadian bank, as where Chase did.  The Canadian routing number wasn't in the format of a US institution, and their software user interface just didn't allow for that number to be entered.  Also, most smaller banks don't have international toll free (in-country) numbers for foreign access. Smaller banks also tend to have less sophisticated business banking tools and experience. If you take a Treasury bond approval to a small bank, they'll generally look at you like you have three heads. So the international side of things is definitely in the favor of big banks; they have a lot more money to dump on services.