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How can regular savings accounts offer such good interest rates?
I already have dealings with Newcastle BS because they swallowed up the excellent Universal BS.
newcastle BS rates are poor, i had a long standing newcastle BS account which i was glad to get rid of so i opened a BMW e-saver ( now 6%) waited till the 100.00 BACS transaction cleared then closed my newcastle account.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this in this thread. Regular savers only pay you approx HALF the advertised rate because you save a fixed amount each month. The balance doesn't start at say £3000, it ENDS up at £3000 (max if you do £250 per month). So the average balance throughout the year is only half of £3000 i.e. £1500. That is why they can "afford" to pay such "good" rates.
The only way you can make these accounts pay above a standard 6% a/c is to feed them FROM that 6% a/c. That way you get interest on the same money in both accounts. But of course this extra interest is not paid from the same bank, so the bank offering the regular saver doesn't mind if you get it elsewhere too. Takes a bit of thinking, but after a while it makes perfect sense.
