| This is a step in the right direction, and personally I think that low-level deposit accounts are ripe for serious competition. There are thousands of banks and credit unions (~9,000 if memory serves) all offering the same risk-free product, but the rates and fees can be wildly different. The FDIC publishes some decent statistics about average yields for various deposit products.[0] As of March 2023, the national average for savings accounts was 0.37%. The largest banks (Wells, BoA, Chase, Citi) offer 0.01% interest. That's 1 penny for every $100 you loan them. That low rate made sense when the federal funds rate was low as an incentive for banks to borrow from consumers rather than the government. But now the rate is almost 20x more than it was a year ago, so there's a larger incentive for banks to borrow from consumers.[1] This should drive more competitive rates offered for consumer deposits. If you're earning less than 1% APY on your checking and savings account and have $1000 in it, spend an hour researching an alternative. Going from 0.01% to 1% alone would earn you $10 more per year on that amount. If you have $10k, that's an extra $100 for maybe an hour of your time. [0] https://www.fdic.gov/resources/bankers/national-rates [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/fedfunds --- On a related note, I'm part of a team working on a service to monitor all the deposit rates across all financial institutions in the US in real time. If you're interested in learning more or signing up for the alpha launch (targeting Summer 2023), shoot us an email at bankrank.alpha@gmail.com |