Natwest Savings Builder

KTF

I haven't seen this posted here yet but Natwest have an account that pays tiered interest if you increase the balance by £100 a month:

http://personal.natwest.com/personal/savings/savings-builder.html

Balance / Balance grows by less than £100 a month / Balance grows by at least £100 a month
£1 - £5,000 / 0.10% / 1.50% (includes 1.40% bonus)
£5,000 - £10,000 / 0.10% / 1.00% (includes 0.90% bonus)
Over £10,000 / 0.10% / 0.20% (includes 0.10% bonus)

May be of interest to people who have a small balance in Santander 123 accounts and still have money to drip feed into the account each month.

Pincher

I think this is supposed to work by celebrities on social media.
Like:

Paris Hilton:

"Opened a NatWest Savings thing, so fun, X X X poodlekins."

1.5%? It does not compute.

PeacefulWaters

Bizarrely complex, don't you think?

KTF

Yes. Plenty of trapdoors for you to fall through so they don't pay the bonus interest.

Rollinghome

Complicated enough to be the work of the card who brought us their E saver a few years back. As I remember paid 2% bonus on 1% basic but the bonus didn't start until a month after the end of the month in which the account was opened - so no bonus would be earned for up to 8 weeks after opening. As it only lasted a year it cunningly reduced the headline rate.

So cunning that they didn't understand it themselves and got the terms on the website wrong, then quietly changed the page, and then denied they had. Sadly for them several people here had saved a copy of the page they changed and they had to hand out bags of compo to keep it away from the ombudsman (but it was only taxpayers' money after all).

jimjames

PeacefulWaters wrote: »

Bizarrely complex, don't you think?

And such a poor rate compared to alternatives

indierocker85

I am failing to see why this account is so "complex", what am I missing?

I decided to go with this account, out of lack of options as to where else to put my money.

I have a Help to Buy ISA with Halifax at 2%
A Nationwide Flex Plus Account, paying 3% (at max of £2500)
I also have a Nationwide Flexclusive regular saver, paying 5% on £500 a month
I have both Halifax and Virgin Money regular savings accounts paying 2% and 2.25% respectively, on £250.

I have some money in a stocks and shares ISA, (Around £4100).

I was left with little options for surplus income, I looked for easy access savings accounts, but they paid a mere 1% or less, so I figured the savings builder might be a good way to save up to £10k, and get 1.5% - 1%. I opened it with £8800 and intend on depositing £100 a month for the next twelve months, which would take me up to £10k. Is this a daft idea? Should I be putting it elsewhere?

Eco_Miser

You've not mentioned TSB, Lloyds, BOS, HSBC, FD, M&S which all pay more than 1.5%, or Santander which pays 1.5% less the fee.

Also why not add it to your S&S ISA?

ColdIron

indierocker85 wrote: »

I looked for easy access savings accounts, but they paid a mere 1% or less
...
I opened it with £8800 and intend on depositing £100 a month for the next twelve months

Which will pay 1%

fun4everyone

ColdIron wrote: »

Which will pay 1%

Wont it pay 1.5% on the first £5000 and 1% on the rest?


I don't think this account is as complex as is made out in other posts. It doesn't match regular savers or some current accounts but once you have completely filled them (which granted is a lot of cash) this seems an OK product.

ColdIron

fun4everyone wrote: »

Wont it pay 1.5% on the first £5000 and 1% on the rest?

Yes you're right, apologies

We pay interest on the above tiers on a stepped basis, which means you'll earn a different rate on each portion of your balance within the tiers