Emigrant Direct is an online bank. There are no physical branch offices associated with this bank. It was founded as an off shoot of a bank founded in the 1800s by immigrants from Ireland. Emigrant Direct offers different products such as savings accounts, certificates of deposit and credit cards.

I opened an account with them several years ago when they offered one of the highest interest rates available on savings account. The account was called the American Dream Savings account. Along with the decrease in interest rates since then, Emigrant Direct has also lowered their interest rates. It is still on the higher end of interest rates but when you are looking at less than 2% interest, it is not very impressive. Certainly a far cry from the greater than 5% interest rates they were paying when they started out.

The Emigrant Direct Credit Card is available along with any Emigrant Direct account. They offer an Emigrant Direct Mastercard. I have not tried these but according to their website, www.emigrantdirect.com, it is available with a low introductory APR on transfer balances. I am somewhat skeptical of this since I can’t find this rate listed anywhere and their so called high interest savings account currently pays 1%. Since when did 1% become a high interest rate? In order to earn the 1.4% cash back on your purchases, you have to maintain an average balance of $10,000 in your American Dream Savings account. Not a great deal in my opinion.

Over the years I have had my account, Emigrant Direct has made a number of improvements to their product. Online transfers to accounts at other bank institutions are simple once you have the account linked to your Emigrant Direct account. The delays in transferring money are compatible to other banks. In most cases my money transferred faster using Emigrant Direct than other online accounts.  Having had a savings account with them, I have been pleased to find that I have always received the documents for tax preparation on time.

Finding the Emigrant Direct routing number can be a bit tricky. It is 226070319. So setting up direct deposits isn’t that difficult with the routing number and your account number. You may have a slight problem with the bureaucracy involved in having an accounting firm set up direct deposits of your paychecks. Generally, when depositing into a savings account, they like to receive a signed letter from the bank listing the routing and account numbers. Not an easy thing to obtain with Emigrant Direct’s online banking.

They have added more levels of security to their login system over the years. I wouldn’t be surprised if they added more as the years go by. After all, the thieves aren’t resting. Emigrant Direct currently offers certificates of deposit paying 2.5% APR. This isn’t great either. They started out with very attractive interest rates but have not been able to maintain them. At this point, I just keep my account to hold a soon to be spent amount of money simply to keep it separate from other funds. The Emigrant Direct account is still good at that since there are no account fees.

To find more Emigrant Direct reviews check http://www.mybanktracker.com. Most reviews on Emigrant Direct are several years old which isn’t surprising since that is when they were actually attractive.

Emigrant Direct competes with other online banks such as ING. They are not considered to be among the top ten players in the Internet only bank group.