It’s one thing to find a bank with a high interest rate, and another thing to have that rate stay high. Many banks post teaser-like rates to attract deposits, and then hope you’ll be lazy and stay while they gradually become uncompetitive. A post yesterday on the NY Times Bucks blog explored ways to counter this.
Bankrate does a quarterly ranking of top banks with consistently high yields, which is “based on the number of times within the quarter that an institution’s yield was among the top 20 for the product category and the relative position of the yield in relation to the others in the product category.” But that’s only one quarter. So the Times asked them which banks have been on top for every single of the last eight consecutive quarters (Q1 2008 to Q4 2009). Good idea!
The next natural question: Which of these banks has the highest rates now? So I visited each site and found the current rates (as of 11/12/13) for their highest yielding savings account (or money market) and their 12-month CD. Since some of the rates were tiered, I picked the rate for a $10,000 deposit and also included the minimum balance needed to avoid fees. Here are the results, sorted by top overall yield:
Banks
|
Online Savings / Money Market
|
12-month CD
|
---|---|---|
0.86% APY / 0.86% Intro ($5k+)
|
0.60% APY
|
|
Discover Bank
|
0.85% APY / 0.70% ($10k+)
|
0.95% APY
|
Ally Bank
|
0.85% APY (No min)
|
0.98% APY
|
Stonebridge Bank
|
1.25% APY ($1k+)
|
1.50% APY
|
Intervest National Bank
|
1.13% APY ($500+)
|
1.50% APY
|
American Bank
|
0.90% APY ($10k+)
|
1.30% APY
|
MetLife Bank
|
0.85% APY ($10k+)
|
1.15% APY
|
First National Bank of Baldwin County
|
0.50% APY ($5k+)
|
1.35% APY
|
M&T Bank, NA
|
0.50% APY (No min)
|
1.10% APY
|
UmbrellaBank (now Beal Bank)
|
0.50% APY ($1k+)
|
1.06% APY
|
0.15% APY ($10k+)
|
1.11% APY
|