The Top Easy Access Savings Discussion Area

financialbliss

@BooJewels - you looked Zopa smart saver?

App based, but you can have different notice pots, which are at different rates. May not be for you, but thought it was worth a mention.

https://www.zopa.com/smart-saver

Band7

cymruchris said:

Band7 said:

Painfully inefficient.

Well they aren't one of the big financial organisations. They are a smaller, traditional old-school setup. As much as we all want everything now these days - it doesn't always work that way. I wouldn't call it painfully inefficient. If you want it NOW - there are other options, but they pay lower interest. I think 5 working days to process is reasonable. But we all have different views on what's acceptably quick. Santander recently took several weeks to open some accounts because they were overwhelmed by applications for their 2.75%. 

I appreciate they are small. I still think they are painfully inefficient. The recent Santander shambles is no excuse - though my Santander esaver was open and operational in less than a minute. I am also an existing MMBS customer, and they are asking on every application whether I am. They never ask for my existing account number but they do ask for name, dob, address etc etc all over again, on each and every application. At least they have now managed to put their application form online for the Premium Instant Access account, but the Regular Saver applications still require paper, and they still use snail mail to post out things like account opening confirmation, passbooks and maturity options. Such a waste of resources. 

phillw

BooJewels said:

phillw said:

BooJewels said:
Yes, that's true of the Premium Instant Account, it's a bit all or nothing and probably better if you have a lot of cash to save and unlikely to go under £25k.  You don't have to keep £25k in it, but interest is slashed to 0.05% on lower balances. 

If you have to make withdrawals such that it falls below £25k then transfer all the remaining to al rayan.

So you get the benefit of 3% on balances above 25k or 2.81% for below.

The rest of my post that you cropped went on to say that in those circumstances, their escalator account might be more suitable, as whilst going under £25k drops to a lower tier of interest, it's significantly better than 0.5%.  The Premium Instant Access account isn't for me personally anyway.  Some account features are slightly more important to my circumstances than just percentage points.

I don't know what other account features are important, but you were discussing the difference between premium instant vs escalator interest.

My point is that

Keeping >25k in Premium Instant Access @3% and moving it all to Al Rayan at 2.84% if you need to withdraw below 25k limit

is better than

Keeping >25k in Escalator account @2.65% dropping to 2.45% or 2.25% if you withdraw below 25k limit.

The escalator doesn't even beat just putting all the money into Al Rayan @ 2.84%.

If you don't like Al Rayan, then even opening a premium instant access and an escalator and leave the money in premium instant access if it's >25k and move it all to escalator once it drops below 25k is better.

BooJewels

financialbliss said:

@BooJewels - you looked Zopa smart saver?

App based, but you can have different notice pots, which are at different rates. May not be for you, but thought it was worth a mention.

https://www.zopa.com/smart-saver

No, I hadn't to be honest. I've been sticking to organisations I'm more familiar with, but they do look interesting - I do like to put things allocated for different purposes into different pots.  Plus they have a 1 year fix at 4.25% that's almost as good as the three year fix I have, that I've got squeamish about putting any more in to - so this might supplement it well.  Thanks for that, I'll give them a detailed look.

@phillw - I'm sure you could come up with a multitude of scenarios that might work better - that wasn't the point of my post - just that the Escalator was slightly less brutal if you went below £25k in an emergency.

alibean121

cymruchris said:

Well they aren't one of the big financial organisations. They are a smaller, traditional old-school setup. As much as we all want everything now these days - it doesn't always work that way. I wouldn't call it painfully inefficient. If you want it NOW - there are other options, but they pay lower interest. I think 5 working days to process is reasonable. But we all have different views on what's acceptably quick. Santander recently took several weeks to open some accounts because they were overwhelmed by applications for their 2.75%. 

My Santander still isn't open although I've moved on from wanting the account as my money is now all at higher rates elsewhere. I am curious to see when they get round to sorting it out though... Not sure why they're so obsessed with keeping old profiles active when there's no open accounts on them then getting surprised when there's address and other discrepancies between the old profile and a new application - that is painfully inefficient in my book!

Sensory

BooJewels said:

@phillw - I'm sure you could come up with a multitude of scenarios that might work better - that wasn't the point of my post - just that the Escalator was slightly less brutal if you went below £25k in an emergency.

This is the Top Easy Access Savings Discussion so there will always be suggestions and comments on posts, even if they may not be applicable to your circumstances. You were comparing Premium vs Escalator, presumably because they're both offerings from the same provider, but this thread doesn't limit hypotheticals to options from a single provider (unless there's a genuine reason to make such considerations). The Escalator account is simply uncompetitive for balances less than £25K so it's not mentioned.

The board helps to maintain an up-to-date list of top easy access accounts here:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6392978/top-easy-access-acs-ranked-top-of-the-pots-no-chat/p1

patpalloon

I guess we won't see any more attractive rates until after the next BoE review on 15 Dec. Anyone got any predictions for the interest rate? 

cymruchris

patpalloon said:

I guess we won't see any more attractive rates until after the next BoE review on 15 Dec. Anyone got any predictions for the interest rate? 

You might not see any more attractive rates even if they do. As has been mentioned a few times - savings rates don't necessarily go up in line with BOE rates. It depends on how many assets the individual banks have on their books, and whether they want more. The more £ they want on their balance sheets to cover things like loans and mortgages, the more they have to increase their savings rates to attract it - but if they have sufficient £ already - they don't need to do anything when the BOE rate rises. (No doubt if it does rise, there will be some movers - but it does feel like the rate of savings increases has slowed down in recent weeks).

soulsaver

patpalloon said:

I guess we won't see any more attractive rates until after the next BoE review on 15 Dec. Anyone got any predictions for the interest rate? 

Maybe best start a new thread for discussing BOE rate predictions - or look for the previous ones. 

pecunianonolet

Hoping for 0.75% increase but looks like more to be a 0.5% increase. Latest tax hikes took pressure off the BoE it seems

https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/bank-england-raise-bank-rate-by-50-bps-dec-peak-425-q1-2022-11-23/