Where are you transferring your NS&I savings?

Boa21

Was fortunate and got into the Coventry while it was stil 1.2% - but no idea how long it'll last.
I've also got 0.7s with Marcus and Kent Reliance - plust a 1.5% Regular Saver with Kent Reliance, which is quite good as you can stash £500 per month in that

enthusiasticsaver

We moved ours to  Yorkshire Building Society at 1% and invested the rest in stocks and shares isas and sipps. 

P3

1.2% Skipton

1.19% Coventry 
0.95% ybs

0.7% Marcus 

cricidmuslibale

eskbanker said:

cricidmuslibale said:

eskbanker said:
Are you under the impression that anyone will notice or care?

Yes I think that if a lot of NS&I savers who have had accounts with NS&I for a long time withdraw their money and close their accounts on 24th November exactly then surely that suggests that they may well not have withdrawn that money / closed those accounts were it not for the very savage interest rate slashing from that day onwards! 

When making their decision, NS&I will naturally have anticipated a significant outflow of funds around the change date, so choosing to withdraw your money on that date, while making sense from an interest optimisation perspective, is a completely futile gesture if you believe it'll somehow shame them into regretting their decision, or whatever other effect you feel it might have, as they'll be expected people to do this!
They may be well be expecting a lot of savers who are relatively new to NS&I  to withdraw a lot of money and probably close their Income Bonds account (if they have one) and possibly their Direct Saver as well. However I think NS&I may well have underestimated the very large number of long term savers with them that are also going to withdraw most if not all of their variable rate savings money (if buying more Premium Bonds is not an option for them) and almost certainly close their respective Income Bonds accounts too! Judging by what I've read on this on social media accounts and in other comments sections there are a lot of irate and/or very disappointed long term NS&I savers at the moment!

cricidmuslibale said:
they uniquely offer a 100% safety guarantee on all money saved with them

But you referred to "the small amount of savings I'm fortunate to possess" so if you're below £85K, the protection afforded by FSCS for savings held with any mainstream regulated provider is comparable to that from NS&I.
I'm actually just above £85K in total at the moment.but, as a freelancer without Government support (i.e. not a PAYE worker or long term self-employed), income from work has almost come to a total standstill due to COVID so I've recently been relying partly on savings to get by - hence my capital is now diminishing. In a much better or even normal interest rate environment I would be able to spend more interest and less capital obviously. 

I should perhaps add that I'm not actually defending NS&I's rate reductions here, but they are what they are, so there's no point in getting all hysterically emotive ("appalled", "disgusted", "savage", "mercilessly", "betrayed", etc, etc) about it, best just to vote with your feet (as you are doing) and move on with your life!

Yes they are what they are but I'm being strongly (rather than hysterically) emotive because NS&I have never in many years (more than 20 at least) been so 'two-faced' in (a) claiming to support savers by retaining interest rates that yes were a little bit higher than average back in April when other savings providers were cutting rates sharply in response to the B of E's interest rate cut to 0.1% but then (b) a mere few months later doing a complete U-turn on this and very severely (except for Premium Bonds) cutting nearly all of their variable and fixed rates. This ruthless volte-face was not at all what I expected from the way NS&I have conducted themselves in the past and frankly I have lost a lot of the considerable respect I had for them before!  

Aceace

Talk of loyalty or respect to NS&I is somewhat misplaced. They are a government owned savings bank that exist for the sole purpose of providing a source of cheap finance for the government. Strict rules are in place to prevent them from offering market leading products, otherwise no other bank would be able to complete as they have the luxury of being able to give 100% capital guarantees. They have mandated targets on the amount of funds that they may attract. They are in serious danger of exceeding those targets as they have attracted too much cash this year. So, they have no choice but to take drastic action to lower rates in order to persuade some of their savers to withdraw cash. All the talk of supporting savers during hard times etc is merely advertising flannel when in the phase of trying to attract funds. 
Due to the inertia of many savers that won't bother to remove their cash, the government now has access to even cheaper funds. So, it has achieved its task, which we will all benefit from, except for those that remain behind on grossly uncompetitive products. Though some may knowingly choose to do so purely for the benefit of the 100% capital guarantee. 

EDIT: Having said that, I will still use their Premium Bonds for my emergency funds, as the equivalent rate is still competitive. I would consider doing so even if the rate was to fall to zero, as it would likely rise again in the new year when the government needed to attract new funds again. 

cricidmuslibale

NS&I were originally (before they temporarily changed their mind and decided to hold their variable interest rates back in April) going to cut variable rates by a reasonable amount to complement the cuts in their fixed rates that did go ahead back in the spring. For example, I remember that the interest rates for Income Bonds and the Direct Saver were going to be cut to c.0.7% and the interest rate for Premium Bonds to 1.3%. If NS&I had gone ahead with these original much more modest cuts as I believe they should have done then they may well not have attracted too much cash this year as they wouldn't have stood out so favourably in comparison with other savings providers. I seem to remember the chief executive of NS&I saying fairly recently that he had been somewhat surprised that many of NS&I's competitors had cut interest rates so swiftly in response to the B of E base rate cut to 0.1%, without seeming to take into account the effects of COVID on their savers. In my opinion he and NS&I as a whole really should have anticipated that they would do just that and thus NS&I's interest rates really should have been adjusted downwards back in the spring as they were originally going to be. Had that happened most NS&I savers would probably have fully accepted it, and these sensible modest interest rate cuts could well have prevented the need for such a severe slashing of rates from this Tuesday onwards. 

Sea_Shell

Only had £500 with them, which has already been closed and moved (Virgin RS's have taken the money for now)

Next year, we have a 5 year savings bond maturing with about £60k in it, so I have no idea at the moment what we're going to do with that.   Who knows how the land will lie by this time next year!!!!     

fred246

Just looking at Virgin RS. Now at 1%. Pay in £250 a month for 14 months and you get £21.88 interest. I really don't know if I can be bothered with a Regular Savings merry-go-round anymore.

Sea_Shell

fred246 said:

Just looking at Virgin RS. Now at 1%. Pay in £250 a month for 14 months and you get £21.88 interest. I really don't know if I can be bothered with a Regular Savings merry-go-round anymore.

We've got a few legacy ones (13,14 & 15), still paying 2%, and 16 @ 1.5%.    We're not adding any "new" money, just shuffling money around.     Mainly the TSB money looking for a home too.

Greatgimp

fred246 said:

Just looking at Virgin RS. Now at 1%. Pay in £250 a month for 14 months and you get £21.88 interest. I really don't know if I can be bothered with a Regular Savings merry-go-round anymore.

Me too - is it really worth the faff to make an annual profit of a Dominoes pizza over a year?