Question about reactivated old account

clearthefog

Hi, I'm gonna throw this into the void and I'm sure be told that there's nothing can be done but here goes - so my wife found an old a passbook for an account with Halifax she'd forgotten about - it was an instant access ISA the last balance was £1500, so we went to the local branch and they took a look etc and in the 12 years since it was last touched it's made abour £120 in interest with an interest rate of 0.79% for whole 12 years… surely that can't be right that it's never changed in that time and was at that rate all the time - is there any way to check?

QrizB

surely that can't be right

Surely it can.

it's never changed in that time and was at that rate all the time

That's entirely possible. Here's the rates that currently apply to the Cash ISA Saver account:

surreysaver

I suppose the reason why some people earn higher interest rates for savings accounts when the shop around, is because it's offset by others who don't shop around, or forget they've got money sat in savings accounts.

Could be worse, it could have been cash sat under a mattress.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6689308/question-about-reactivated-old-account

I agree that it's unlikely that even an entry-level variable rate account is unlikely to have had no changes at all in interest rate for 12 years, but it may have spent much of that time significantly below 0.79%, given that the BoE base rate was lower than that from 2009 to 2020, so an average rate below 1% doesn't sound outlandish, in the context of accounts like that, where customers are effectively penalised for inertia.