It formerly did not offer current accounts using its own resources and instead through an agreement with Allied Irish Banks, an ATM card service was operated using AIB's Banklink system.

In 2003, the EBS building society promoted a controversial product which involved parents remortgaging the family home to help their children buy a property.

Called FamilyFirst, the product was aimed at first-time buyers and enabled parents to help raise the deposit on a starter home by taking out a loan with no repayments due for three years.

On 18 September 2009, Fergus Murphy, the chief executive of Educational Building Society (EBS) admitted his financial institution had played a key role in helping to create an overheated economy.

Eithne Tinney, a former EBS director has described a “feeding frenzy” which existed between lenders and developers in the lead-up to the crash and the bonus system in banks as “crazy”.

[5] The European Commissioner for Competition, Joaquín Almunia, said "EBS needs a significant recapitalisation to comply—and to continue to comply in the coming years—with capital requirement rules."

[6] The former head of EBS Building Society Fergus Murphy told the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry in 2015 there was a “very reasonable chance” the institution could have made it through the crash without being nationalised and merged with AIB if it had not got involved in land development and commercial property lending.

In November 2020 a financial advisor who was an employee of EBS and who stole a total €271,000 from elderly and vulnerable people was jailed for eleven months at Sligo Circuit Court.

This fine was separate from the more than the €105m that EBS has been required to pay to date in redress, compensation and account balance adjustments to impacted customers.