Regular Savings Accounts: The Best Currently Available List!

RG2015

@njs131905

Re NW/RBS Digital Regular Saver.

I agree that the change to the 5% increase from £1,000 to £5,000 should have been notified.

Thank you for pointing this out and in fact NW/RBS should be admonished. Customers cannot make informed decisions when the rules are significantly changed, even if they do favour the customer.

I really don’t follow why they would not publicise this. There was a note on their websites but this has now gone.

There should have been an email in advance with such a major change.

njs131905

RG2015 said:

@njs131905

Thank you for pointing this out and in fact NW/RBS should be admonished. Customers cannot make informed decisions when the rules are significantly changed, even if they do favour the customer.

I really don’t follow why they would not publicise this. There was a note on their websites but this has now gone.

There should have been an email in advance with such a major change.

Wouldn't NW/RBS DRS 5.12% AER upto £5K, easy access, unlimited withdrawals, "current account required to open", place these two offerings equivalent to Barclay's Rainy Day Saver? Or if not, potentially the best "non-standard savings account", as NW/RBS don't require current account activity/costs equivalent to Barclay's "Blue Rewards" qualification in order to open DRS.

Perhaps there's other offerings out there I'm not aware of, or savings products I'm outirght discounting due to withdrawal restrictions...

I think NW/RBS may inform/text message DRS customers sooner rather than later, as I think in hindsight, their previous alerts regarding the interest rate increase was done 3 days later... Perhaps they delay just to iron-out any system/website gremlins.

RG2015

The Barclays Rainy Day Saver wins hands down as it allows the maximum £5k to be deposited as a lump sum. The qualification criteria are not particularly onerous.

ForumUser7

The texts from NW/RBS came out a couple of weeks later for me - so maybe some time next week or the week after? I don't know

Band7

I haven’t checked the NW/RBS RS T&Cs, but usually banks have some 30 days after making customer-favourable changes to notify them. 

Wheres_My_Cashback

njs131905 said:

RG2015 said:

Re NatWest/RBS Digital Regular Savers.

Now shows 5.00% for £1,304.14 balances in each of NatWest and RBS.

Great rate for up to £10k combined but as I build up to this figure at £300 per month I am not going to be accessing any of it.

Very clever move by them to hold on to my money!

My first post here, not a criticism, but something important to point out:

NatWest / RBS have not communicated to existing DRS account holders that the maturity-amount (is that the right word?) had increased from £1k to £5k.

The only way I found out was because my NW-DRS had reached maturity yesterday, and (as I had closed my Current/Reward Account with them), I could only withdraw my over-maturity value (right wordage again?) in branch...

Maturity, what maturity? 

As for being advised, they are under no legal obligation to do so when the rate goes up, only when it goes down and that will be set out in the T&Cs. Some financial organisations do advise of rate increases, many dont.

However, their terms state they will advise and have by way of advising it on their website.

refluxer

cricidmuslibale said:

I’ve been wondering for quite a while now, why are there only 3 regular saver ISAs in total currently available (according to Moneyfacts), one each from Vernon Building Society, Progressive Building Society and Hanley Economic Building Society respectively?

(Of these three, only Vernon’s, paying 3% annual interest, is really competitive with normal, non ISA regular savers at the moment.)

It is notable that none of the above are being offered by major banks and building societies!

Any thoughts please as to why the “big boys and girls” in the savings world in particular were not interested in offering regular saver ISAs at the start of this financial year, and whether they may consider offering them at the start of the next financial year?

Maybe it’s just me but I would have thought they would be quite popular with quite a few savers if they were much more widely available during the first few weeks from April 6 2023 onwards! I would certainly be more than interested!

Is the fact that the current annual ISA allowance of £20,000 is not divisible by 12 a key reason why regular saver ISAs are so rare at the moment, perhaps? I would still have thought that it would be feasible and reasonably practical for banks and building societies to either permit 8 monthly deposits of £1667 plus 4 of £1666 or instead to only allow a maximum of 10 monthly deposits of up to £2000 for a regular saver ISA lasting the usual 12 months.

I guess it's very rare for a RS to allow you to put away a 4-figure sum every month. Most are in the £50-£250/month region, with some exceptions (First Direct, Lloyds etc) who allow you to contribute more each month at a better rate, but only in return for also taking out a current account.

I've still got one of the few 4-figure Regular Savers I've seen in recent years (a Leek BS Flexible Saver @ £1000/month) but the rate on that has slipped below the best easy access accounts, now making it essentially pointless.

I guess the banks have to find a compromise between the amount they'll allow you to deposit and the rate they can offer, with the higher combinations being limited to the bigger banks who also offer (compulsory) current accounts. From the RS ISA accounts you mentioned, it sounds like the RS ISA rates are in the same ball-park as a conventional easy access ISA, in which case a conventional easy access ISA (without the usual RS restrictions) would make more sense.

RG2015

Wheres_My_Cashback said:

njs131905 said:

RG2015 said:

Re NatWest/RBS Digital Regular Savers.

Now shows 5.00% for £1,304.14 balances in each of NatWest and RBS.

Great rate for up to £10k combined but as I build up to this figure at £300 per month I am not going to be accessing any of it.

Very clever move by them to hold on to my money!

My first post here, not a criticism, but something important to point out:

NatWest / RBS have not communicated to existing DRS account holders that the maturity-amount (is that the right word?) had increased from £1k to £5k.

The only way I found out was because my NW-DRS had reached maturity yesterday, and (as I had closed my Current/Reward Account with them), I could only withdraw my over-maturity value (right wordage again?) in branch...

Maturity, what maturity? 

As for being advised, they are under no legal obligation to do so when the rate goes up, only when it goes down and that will be set out in the T&Cs. Some financial organisations do advise of rate increases, many dont.

However, their terms state they will advise and have by way of advising it on their website.

The first time poster, @njs131905 is not claiming any breach of the Ts & Cs, merely stating that they would have expected an advance notification of the change.

It is really a matter on common courtesy.

As regards the use of the term "maturity", the poster did qualify this with the comment in parentheses; "is that the right word?.

In my opinion, your comments are rather harsh and somewhat unjustified in this instance.   

RG2015

Re NatWest/RBS Digital Savers.

The word maturity has recently been used to describe the level at which the interest rates drops from 5.00% to 0.50%.

On 6th December this amount was increased from £1,000 to £5,000.

Maturity is not the correct terminology here. However, don't believe that there is a single word to describe this, but I imagine that most people would understand the meaning of the word maturity in this context.

I believe that most people, especially on this site, would not hold a balance much above £5k with the massive drop in the interest rate.

Perhaps 5% ceiling level would be more accurate, but maturity is quite an elegant best match term to use.

Section62

cricidmuslibale said:

Any thoughts please as to why the “big boys and girls” in the savings world in particular were not interested in offering regular saver ISAs at the start of this financial year, and whether they may consider offering them at the start of the next financial year?

Maybe it’s just me but I would have thought they would be quite popular with quite a few savers if they were much more widely available during the first few weeks from April 6 2023 onwards! I would certainly be more than interested!

Is the fact that the current annual ISA allowance of £20,000 is not divisible by 12 a key reason why regular saver ISAs are so rare at the moment, perhaps? I would still have thought that it would be feasible and reasonably practical for banks and building societies to either permit 8 monthly deposits of £1667 plus 4 of £1666 or instead to only allow a maximum of 10 monthly deposits of up to £2000 for a regular saver ISA lasting the usual 12 months.

IIRC the last ISA RS account I had (Nottingham BS) only allowed a maximum deposit of £1600/month, but after some date in March they allowed you to deposit extra money up to the ISA allowance (including any missed months).

So in principle I don't think the divisibility by 12 issue is a significant factor in product availability.

I'd suggest it might be that if someone's finances are in such a shape where sheltering cash savings in an ISA is important to them, then it is highly likely that the most tax-efficient way to do so is to use the full ISA allowance as soon as possible in the new tax year, rather than drip-feeding money into an ISA over the course of 12 months.  Therefore the value of a RS ISA to the general population is rather limited.

I only had mine with Nottingham BS because the interest rate wasn't bad and it was another way of getting cash into an RS account paying more than a paltry interest rate*. Having ISA status wasn't a consideration.

*Edit: Just checked out of curiosity, it was opened when the Notts RS ISA was paying 2% compared to the easy access rates of 1.5% from Marcus and 1.41% from Ford Money.