unanimous response was that PNC bank is the best bank in the area for small businesses.
I personally bank with PNC and currently have two startup businesses that have been with PNC for more than two years
I use pnc for my real estate investments. They are easy to work with and the online banking system is above average. However they are not necessarily interested in small loans
. (Under a half million). They will tell you differently, but I know this from personal experience and information form others.
Two local banks that have impressed me lately because of there interesting in getting in the small business market are nation penn and vist
Whatever you do, do not use sovereign bank!
1 – Commerce Bank is amazing in the Philadelphia area
2 – PNC was better on Saturday hours, not as good as commerce
3 – Wachovia NO STINKING WAY!!
4 – Wamu wasn’t available in my zip but they have decent Saturday hours where they have branches
5 – HSBC Direct had two branches locally so I knew I’d be giving up branch flexibility if I chose them
6 – US bank – ugly site turned me off enough to not even consider them (site design impacts decisions)
7 – Chase wasn’t close but that didn’t really matter very much they did have decent Saturday hours
8 – Citizens bank has one local branch that had good Saturday and Sunday hours but most were not so great.
9 – Wells Fargo no local branches, scary BUT I’ll let them through to the next criteria
1 – PNC bank – says they make it easy to transfer both within their bank and to external institutions, great
2 – Wachovia – from my personal experience you can only transfer within business accounts at Wachovia, so if you want to transfer to personal accounts at Wachovia or other institutions you got no chance
3 – Citizens Bank – transfer only within Citizen Bank business accounts (from what I could tell)
4 – HSBC Direct– can’t transfer out to other banks, not very good for fast moving mobile professionals
5 – Chase – Can transfer to other institutions
6 – Wamu – Couldn’t find it if they did on their site, so I took that as a NO
7 – Wells Fargo – not only were their demos weak (https://www.wellsfargo.com/biz/online_banking/demo/), they couldn’t transfer to other institutions
