Update 11/19/19: This has now been approved. Federal regulators required BB&T and SunTrust to sell 30 branches and divest itself of $2.4 billion in assets on condition of the merger.
Update 6/12/19: the new name of the combined bank will be Truist Bank. It’s pronounced TRUE-ist. 🤔]
The big financial news today is that BB&T is buying Suntrust, in a deal expected to close before the end of 2019, and the largest such deal in over a decade. The combined company will operate under an entirely new name to create the sixth largest U.S. bank by assets.
Currently, most of us don’t deal on a regular basis with either of these companies from the credit card end, though there are a couple of credit card offers from the banks we’ve posted about. It’ll be interesting to see if the combined bank gets more competitive in that space.
The other angle is the bank bonus end. Those in their target area have had some bank bonus offer sent their way from BB&T and Suntrust . Hopefully, that will continue, and perhaps become available nationwide.
If you have a specific Suntrust or BBT bonus you’ve been interested in doing, now is good time since it’s hard to know whether these will continue to be available as the merger date nears.
View Comments (69)
Hopefully they'll have some decent credit card offerings. BB&T's are a bit meh; I'm not 100% certain about SunTrust's, at least as far as SUBs, but they're also a bit underwhelming in terms of long-term usability.
I'm not quite as interested in bank account bonuses, due to a lack of liquidity, but I occasionally get BB&T mailers about them, so who knows?
I wonder if they’ll rename the Braves baseball stadium from suntrust park to Truist park? That’ll be a good laugh
worst bank name ever award.
slogan idea: "You can trust us we're the 6th largest!"
You mean "You can truist us we're the 6th largest!"
BB&T has been a royal PITA. First, they keep telling me it is illegal for me to have POA for someone and be a beneficiary on their account. Not so. As AIF, I cannot add or change beneficiaries, but the owner of the account can be anyone he/she wants down as beneficiary. This is their policy - not against the law. This little business has cost me $1,000 to close an account as part of an estate because there was no beneficiary on it. When I went in today with a judge's order to give me the money in that account, they wouldn't do it and insisted I open an estate account (there is no estate) and deposit the money in there; then wait for probate to be completed until I could have the money. There is no probate. This is a Summary Judgement signed by a judge which says give her the money. After a half hour of me insisting that they give me the money, the woman finally called their legal department who said, give her the money.
When my husband was in the hospital three years ago with a broken ankle and a terminal diagnosis, they refused to let me use the POA to transfer money so I could pay bills. I had been doing that for years, and they had a copy of the POA on file. My husband and our attorney knew what I was doing. BB&T insisted that my husband had to personally come in and give his permission for me to withdraw the money. They would not accept a phone call from him or our attorney. HELLO!!! He's in the hospital and that's what POAs are for. I had to borrow money to pay bills until three weeks later I could drag him into the bank in a wheelchair so he could give them permission to allow me to access his accounts.
They marketed to me a secured credit card using a secured savings account as collateral. I set everything up with them. Then I got a letter from them saying their secured savings account was not secure and could not be used as collateral therefore they could not give me a secured credit card. EXCUSE ME!!! Cash is not collateral!! What do you want? My first born.
I've had enough of this bank. I will be taking my money elsewhere.
Wow, that was an epic rant. I mean that as a compliment. If it were my business, I'd want to know all of that...so I could change/improve...so no one else would ever have to endure the same ordeal. But these corporations, they're so big, that no individual customer is valuable enough to even be a blip on their radar. And then they do a merger and become even bigger. *shaking my head
Kept the SunTrust account I opened last summer around to pay the balance on my Barclays Aviator Red each month. The $500 bonus paid the annual fee on the card when I got it last August so the 60,000 miles basically cos me nothing. This name change is really dumb though and I'll be closing the account in a couple of weeks when I return from Europe.
I kinda hope the Skymiles debit card sticks around.
That's a stupid name and if I have to change my direct deposit info for BB&T or get new checks, I'm going to walk myself over to M&T instead. I've been slightly ticked at BB&T anyway for closing the nearest branch. SunTrust, oddly enough, has the nearest physical branch to me now, but they'll likely shutter it in favor of the big BB&T that's further away.
Who uses checks???
They can still come in handy for a few things.
the people in front of me at a checkout lane.
These are pretty giant banks. They aren't going to be upset if you leave. If they shutter your branch, go elsewhere. But maybe they were planning ahead by getting rid of the other.
I have only been part of one big merger/buyout (PNC bought out RBC Centura in the US), and they provided new checks for free at my account level, but I am not sure everyone got that courtesy. The DD did need to be switched, with a grace period of a few months, as I recall.
But you will just have to standby for details. Or, just leave and not have to deal with website changes/DD changes/policy changes and notices.
was going to go for suntrust bonus in couple days. any idea if i will have a problem getting it if merger goes through before requirements are met? i already have a main 10 year old acc with BBT. will i have a problem if bbt acc is open? should i close it? i rather avoid that though.
Keep a copy of the terms & screenshot. Mergers take months and months. They have to honor the original terms. You aren't required to be forward thinking and debate on when switch-over will happen.
That being said, your timing is not the best. Hope you plan to use a real DD just in case you need to argue/contest, but as I recall, Suntrust doesn't take 5 months to payout.
Sounds more like a weed dispensary than a bank.