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Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society: Mortgages reviews

Name: Mortgages
Rating: 4.65 (107 reviews)

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4.66

Based on 107 reviews, last reviewed 23rd Jun 2025

100% increase in 5 star reviews

in the past 90 days

100% decrease in 1 star reviews

in the past 90 days

86%

Latest highest rating:

5

Outstanding, friendly, efficient and thoughtful serv... Outstanding, friendly, efficient and thoughtful service in every way. Matched our needs to the best mortgage product available and I would say the bes... Read more Reviewed on: 23rd June 2025

Latest lowest rating:

1

Incompetent, frustrating and time-wasters Utterly incompetent. Took 2 months to event get our re-mortgage application processed (costing time, and money) and then every single thing we put was... Read more Reviewed on: 13th March 2025

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Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society Mortgages reviews (107)

Review of the Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society, Mortgages:

Beware false promises from this lender!

We were pre-approved for a loan, which was a 35% loan to value purchase. With our large down payment and small loan we felt comfortable making an offer on a home we liked and expected a fairly simple closing process. Then we were told the parameters of our loan had changed despite already being pre-approved. We agreed to the change, though it put a bit of strain on us. Now, we believed we could proceed, but after foot dragging by the lender, once again they changed the terms, and once again we reluctantly found a way to make it work. And then, after all our capitulations, we found out that our loan was denied on a technicality we had never been made aware of. So we have a contract with no lending secured after weeks thinking that approval was already somewhat assured. We feel deceived and cheated out of precious time which might result in us losing our contract on our purchase and out the fees we incurred from this lender and our solicitors. Reviewed on: 12th August 2024

Reply from Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society Hi Valerie, we are sorry that our services have not met your expectations. Please can you get in touch with us on [email protected] or 0330 123 0723 so we can discuss the matter further with you. Response date: 19th August 2024

Helpful, professional and a good mortgage deal

It is very easy to contact Ipswich Building society and to speak to an advisor. I received good advice and I am very happy with my mortgage. Everything was set up with the minimum of fuss. Reviewed on: 15th July 2021

Got there in the end

Overall our experience wasn't a possitive one. From a Feb 2021 engagement we ended up with a July 2021 completion. Whilst I was always able to contact the IBS team, I had to work hard to chase these communications/milestones and never felt an urgency to IBS driving these outcomes. Every time a response was made to IBS, it was subjected to a 10 working day turnaround time; this increased to 12 days towards the end of our processing. This heavily impacted the overall timetable significantly. As a self build mortgage, our engagement continues. We will draw down funds against our build milestones so this has to be an effective and timely process. Thus far, it hasn't. I find myself having to think 6 weeks ahead from the imperative date of stage funds reciept to work back factoring in IBS lead times and any additional lead time associated to instructing a revaluation of the property. This shouldn't be the norm; I've created a workaround. I understand very well the impact of remote working over the past 16 months. I understand how this can impact on day to day processes but I could not tell my Customers that their requests are sublect to a 2+ week delay. Are further resource is needed to meet your demand?. It cannot be purely attributed to the pandemic therefore perhaps internal procedures or a triage function is required to route work to the right teams at the right time. Reviewed on: 14th July 2021

Reply from Suffolk Building Society, formerly Ipswich Building Society Thank you for providing your feedback which is greatly appreciated and has been passed on to the relevant departments at the Society. I’m sorry that your application wasn’t processed efficiently and for the amount of time it has taken to get through to completion. We have recently received unprecedented application volumes due partly to the stamp duty deadline and unfortunately as a result, our usual service standards slipped below the level we aim to provide our customers with. The Society are committed to making improvements to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, as a result we have made investment within our underwriting department with further staff resource now in place and a significant IT system upgrade in the works. Thank you once again for your feedback and I wish you well with your self build project. Response date: 26th July 2021

Mortgage

You had to find a lot of paperwork, funny how we passed the credit check, but failed the ID check as we didn't have enough check points, like loans, debts, credit cards, HP's. And the time limit on the Mortgage was very tight to the move date, which was brought forward to accommodate the application expiry date. (Maybe we applied too early, but it was after we sold and the chain was complete). Reviewed on: 14th July 2021

Oldies can get mortgages

Needed a few more pennies and so who else but Ipswich Building Society. Reviewed on: 20th April 2021

Helpful and efficient

Ipswich Building Society explained the process very clearly at each stage. My mortgage consultant was extremely helpful and efficient, she responded to my questions and queries very promptly and in general the process went very smoothly. Reviewed on: 20th April 2021

My requirement fully met and staff knowledgeable

We got there in the end but some delays due to Covid and valuation delays Reviewed on: 31st March 2021

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