Marcus increases rates before BOE announcement

arsenalboy

Just received an email from Marcus increasing its rates immediately on its Online Saver account from 1.55 to 1.80 including bonus. The email was sent at 1112. I wonder whether they will increase it again after announcement? Are there games being played here, why increase rates an hour before BOE announcement.

RobM99

To get extra custom maybe.

InvesterJones

The obvious answer is it's what they think will serve their business better - they've got to balance attracting/keeping savers with the impact on revenue. Marcus have been falling behind in rates and they probably felt they needed to do something but in order to minimise it/delay it as late as possible this was the best timing.

25_Years_On

So people forget which rises are in response to which Bank of England rises. This is the first rise since the 0.5% BoE rise. In a few weeks they will look way behind the leaders.

armistice

The increase today is in reflection of the last base rate decision (3rd August), not todays.

The previous increase was also on the date of decision (3rd August), reflecting the previous one. 

sandy700

My email said 

New underlying interest rate
1.55% AER/1.54% gross* (variable)

yet logging into my account it says 1.8%

Now I can decrease the amount I have in my Vantage account to just enough to pay the DDs.

Millyonare

That 1.8% looks quite a poor rate. Some rival accounts (like AR bank) are already above 2%, and there will no doubt be loads more in the next 1-4 weeks.

eskbanker

sandy700 said:

My email said 

New underlying interest rate
1.55% AER/1.54% gross* (variable)

yet logging into my account it says 1.8%

As well as the underlying interest rate, there is also a 12-month 0.25% bonus rate that can be added on request, which you've presumably done at some point?

dosh37

Millyonare said:

That 1.8% looks quite a poor rate. Some rival accounts (like AR bank) are already above 2%, and there will no doubt be loads more in the next 1-4 weeks.

Indeed. The BoE rate goes up by 0.5% and once again savers are thrown a just few crumbs from the rich mans table - in this case a 0.3% increase. May as well switch to Ford Money or wait for other savings organisations to leapfrog.

2010

This is just a cynical move by Marcus.
They are actually one month behind the rest of the pack with this increase.

refluxer

Damned if they do - damned if they don't 

While they're definitely late to the party, their rate now isn't far off the top table and is substantially higher than a lot of competitors like Atom, Tandem and many others. Whatever Marcus's strategy is, it's presumably working for them otherwise they'd be forced to change it.

At the end of the day, all the banks are playing games - just not necessarily the same one !