Cash Savings hubs

Pat38493

Does anyone here have any feedback or comments about the cash savings hubs available from AJ Bell, Interactive Investor and elsewhere?  These seem to allow you to deposit your money in a kind of sweep account and then put it into the (claimed) best fixed term or notice savings accounts automatically - the idea is to make it easier to manage your savings as interest rates change.

I am wondering i this is worthwhile to use this type of service?

IvanOpinion

I use HL Active Savings. Not sure if they have the best rates but the rates are 'up there'. 
Lodging and receiving money, so far, has been very easy. Simple bank transfer and money is available in the hub almost immediately for assigning to whichever products take your fancy. Similarly when a product matures the money is available in the hub within 24hours and can be withdrawn or reinvested - just select the desired product and tell it how much you want to save.

I find it very convenient and does away with a lot of the form filling.

I just wish their ISA rates were a bit more competitive.

TheBanker

IvanOpinion said:

I use HL Active Savings. Not sure if they have the best rates but the rates are 'up there'. 
Lodging and receiving money, so far, has been very easy. Simple bank transfer and money is available in the hub almost immediately for assigning to whichever products take your fancy. Similarly when a product matures the money is available in the hub within 24hours and can be withdrawn or reinvested - just select the desired product and tell it how much you want to save.

I find it very convenient and does away with a lot of the form filling.

I just wish their ISA rates were a bit more competitive.

I also use HL Active Savings and agree it's very convenient.

Their rates aren't always the absolute best (sometimes you can get a slightly higher rate by going direct to the same bank), but the convenience of being able to open an account with a couple of clicks outweighs that for me. Also all your interest information is in one place which is handy if you need to complete a tax return.

But the OP was asking about services that automatically deposit your money to get the best return. HL don't do that, you have to manage it yourself. I prefer it that way, as I can decide to use six and 12 month fixed rates aligned to planned future expenses.

I agree about the ISA - I was interested when they launched the cash ISA but they only have a few products available which are not very competitive. Their best rate is 4.67% from Zopa, but I am earning >5% on my directly opened Zopa ISA. And currently it's a choice between easy access and 2+ year fixes. I don't tend to fix for more than 12 months with ISAs, not sure why they've not got any 12m products on offer. 

bikeman

I have an AJ Bell cash savings hub account. Its convenient but the biggest problem I have with it is there are no statements, you just see a balance of the accounts opened.

For closed accounts there are no account numbers, no statements and no tax certificates.

Its all a bit incomplete. I probably wont use the cash savings hub again.