When I moved to Hawaii, I decided to bank with a local bank, as national banks do not have branches located here. I originally set up my checking account online before I was physically in Hawaii. It appealed to me that I could easily set up my account and electronically transfer money from my California account to the First Hawaiian Bank account. The first time I paid a visit to the bank, it was a very pleasant experience. We had to transfer money because we had just sold our home in California and were buying a home in Hawaii. The teller helped us transfer our money to the escrow company. She took the time out to explain the various methods of transferring money. The bank implemented a new online security system, and I had trouble signing in. So I went to my local bank branch and explained the problem to the teller. She was so understanding and polite. Another time I needed to deposit a business check in our personal checking account. The teller made it possible for us to deposit it in our personal account. As for savings accounts, CDs and money market accounts, I believe their rates are competitive, but not as good as some national banks. I think their banking fees are reasonable and fit within my budget. I prefer to do my banking at the local branch rather than using the mobile app because of the excellent customer service that I receive.

My experiences with First Hawaiian Bank have been mixed. When dealing with the tellers, they are very polite and professional however sometimes they don't have the right amount of knowledge to help you with your questions. This is especially true when the elderly want to ask questions, it ends up holding up the line for long periods of time, while the tellers go to get supervisors to help them. Aside from this however, this bank has mostly given me very pleasant experiences. I've changed money here numerous times and each and every time they have been very helpful. This process seems to take the bank longer than usual though because they do not keep foreign currency on hand and need to order. This increases the wait time by about one or two weeks depending on how fast they get currency delivered. They recently launched an online service which so far has been very convenient and valuable. Due to being a fairly new online service, the website gets updated quite frequently, this leads to many downloads on a mobile device and is a bit hard for those with a limited data plan.

FHB was my favorite for many years but I had to let them go due to high fees. They charge ~$10/month for any Quicken-type account downloads, something other Hawaii banks provide for free. I've found that smaller banks have many benefits such as an absence of waiting lines.