US savers get savvy ditching and switching banks | Hacker News Reader

US savers get savvy ditching and switching banks

bbc.com

30 pointsrntn23 comments

> "It's a competitive market," Jeremy Barnum, chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase told investors on Friday, as the firm reported that average deposits had fallen 8% from a year ago.

Meanwhile:

https://www.chase.com/personal/savings/savings-account/inter...

0.01% interest rate

They're still better off keeping rates low and shafting the 92% of customers who stayed behind. I think too many people are permanently un-savvy for the market to ever truly be competitive.

Chase recently started operating in the UK and their rates are really good here. And they'll have to stay that way if they want any customers, their other incentives have slowly but surely been worsening (cashback, referrals).

The cynical part of me hears this and assumes that they’re intentionally offering better-than-average rates in a new market to establish a base of customers, and then slowly pull back the competitiveness once they’re established.

I also think that's what they've done but they'll have to keep the good rates as it's really easy to switch banks over here.

EDIT: actually, they just sent me an email saying the current account interest will soon be 1%, that's very good for a current account. The saver is still at 3.1%

In Canadian telecom, when you call Rogers or Bell to cancel your cell phone plan they transfer you to a retentions' department who will offer you a special rate to retain your business.

I wonder if banks will do the same. From a profit perspective, having the same price for all customers sounds inefficient.

In the U.S., customer service agents sometimes give a rentention offer when you ask to close a credit card account, especially if it has an annual fee. They may waive or reduce the annual fee if you agree to keep the account open, or give a statement credit or some other reward if you spend a certain amount of money on the card. These offers are more common when you spend more money on the card.

Yeah, that's not going to happen any time soon.

I recently settled the estate of a deceased family member and moved some very large amounts of money through my JPMC accounts. As in, orders of magnitude larger than I normally deposit.

Did it trigger any flag from their sales department to maybe ask if I was interested in investing it with them, or moving it to a CD or money market account?

Nope. It was in and out and nary a peep was heard from them the entire time.

> As in, orders of magnitude larger than I normally deposit.

> It was in and out and nary a peep was heard from them the entire time.

It could be a blessing in disguise, as they could have instead put a hold on transactions and forcing you to show up in a branch in person to unblock it. Because their ML systems told so.

Fedwire transfers usually don't get held up by their fraud detection systems. That can be an advantage at times and a disadvantage at others.

This just happened to me. I setup a Marcus account and have had 10s of k locked for weeks because it’s apparently suspicious that I want to transfer it to an account other than the one it came in from. The rates don’t even beat any money market rates in a brokerage account so I struggle to see the purpose of these high interest cash accounts.

Hmm, but when I log on Chase they are often advertising the JPMorgan side which offers 4% on cash.

So… they are offering high rates, but seem to be keeping it only to specific segments at the moment. I guess most people that use the regular checking accounts just don’t care or maybe don’t leave much money there.

Don't you need to have like >$100k to use those?

Exactly why I switched from my bank. Ridiculous low interest rates like that to high ones with newer banks.

It’s weird as I remember banks dropping immediately when rates dropped and I’m still sitting on rates of 0.01% and whatnot. I’m not sure why it is as there must be some calculus that banks are doing to keep rates low. My credit union also hasn’t raised their rates either even though the fed went from 0 to 4%.

It’s even surprising for previously “high yield” that dropped their rates when rates went down and didn’t raise them. I had an ING account from years ago that is at 1%. They offer a “high yield” version but require me to close my account and reopen it to get the new rate.

I think they just figure enough people won’t care and are better off hosing the majority of customers.

It's the same reason why you get paid more when you switch jobs rather than stay at your current employer.

Loyalty doesn't pay.

But also, advantages that flow to a business are extremely sticky. The business won't budge those rates until they feel forced to - either by bad P.R., or by a customer exodus.

And thus the advantage of all banks conspiring sub rosa to keep those rates low - they're still competitive if nobody else is budging either.

What’s the most competitive HYSA rate at the moment?

I have 4% on a normal savings account at Ally. Assuming the current trend of rate hikes continues, I should make a few hundred bucks in interest this year, which is nice!

I live overseas currently so switching isn't really feasible at the moment so it's nice I have a bank that is generally on top of providing good returns for their customers.

Wealthfront is doing 4.3%, CIT is at 4.75%, Vio Bank is at 4.77%. and UFB Direct is at 5.02%. They offer different advantages and services beyond just the rates, so check them all out.

3.75 at discover. I can't speak much to their customer service since the money just pretty much goes in and comes out lol

I've had their credit card for decades and they've been great on the rare occasion I need them.

Keep in mind that lot of smaller banks will advertise fairly high rates like 5-6% for a few months and then fall back down to the prevailing rate or even lower (a HYSA with a better return than treasuries is a red flag).

IMO better to find a bank that is consistently near the top rate, unless you want to deal with the hassle of moving banks quarterly.

Why not use a money market account? Vanguard defaults to putting any cash I move there into one and is getting 4.76% currently.

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