lloyds online saver account

danster

hi all,
i use lloyds for my online banking. i normally move a bit over into my ING account because of the good rate of interest. ive just seen this on the lloyds site though:
Get your money working harder with an Online Saver. You'll have total control over your money 24/7 with instant access and no penalties for withdrawal. It’s quick and easy to open and offers a great rate of up to 4.75% (5% gross) on savings of £250 and more. Log on and click 'savings' to open your Online Saver.
what do you guys think. looks better than ING to me, but look salmost too good to be true?
- D

se999

You have to follow the * on the page to discover the 4.75% includes and extra 0.5% for the first 6 months only. But we've got one anyway because we're constantly moving amounts between the 2 accounts, and don't want to lose days of interest in interbank transfers.

We don't use it for our background savings though, that's elsewhere paying a better rate of return. We just use it to maximise interest on variations in cashflow balance.

System

I use my LLoyds TSB account as an aid to my current account. I have 5 online savers in which i shift money on a weekly basis to cover stuff like building insurance, savings accounts (money gets shifted from there at the end of the month into my Halifax account), my credit card bill (i dont spend on my debit card i shove it on my credit card and get cashback and a months interest all thrown in). The interest isnt the best, but its an easy tool for me. I too have the ING account and although i like it a lot, i am slowly depleting it to invest elsewhere.

Lucie_2

I've just set up an on-line saver with Lloyds TSB. Like Judi says, you can have as many as you like. Choose annual interest rather than monthly & you get more. It set up in seconds, very simple. I have closed my smile savings account & transfered all the money to this.

Stonk

It's good for temporarily accomodating any money over £5K that would otherwise be in your current account for some reason, because anything over £5K in the current account earns 0.1% interest. During the bonus period, it's also good for *all* the money that would otherwise be in your current account.

Note that the Saver pays 0.1% on balances under £250, so if its balance is ever less than that, you're better off putting it back into the current account.

Transfers are instantaneous. It's very simple to set up and use.