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Comment by blackeyeblitzar | Hacker News Reader

> At a real major US bank, I was getting 4.65% in my savings account at this same time.

Was that in a CD, or in an account with a big minimum? Most major banks did not offer such a rate in a generic mass market liquid savings product.

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You're getting downvoted, but I don't think it's fair. Sure, there are many places you can get a high interest rate, but it's also true that the baseline savings accounts for most major banks aren't paying high interest.

Proof:

https://www.bankofamerica.com/deposits/bank-account-interest...

https://www.chase.com/personal/savings/interest-savings/inte...

https://www.wellsfargo.com/savings-cds/rates/

https://www.navyfederal.org/checking-savings/savings/savings...

https://www.citi.com/banking/current-interest-rates/savings-...

Discover (high interest) even does a comparison on their site comparing their interest rates to other major banks

https://www.discover.com/online-banking/savings-account/

So the average person who goes to the Wells Fargo down the street and says "give me a savings account" is getting minuscule interest.

Since the company the article is about is a new fintech, I’d say users should be comparing to online banks and not the old guard retail banks.

I.e. Marcus, Amex, citizen access, etc. note those are tied to very reputable businesses too.

Then there’s the hundred or more high yield online banks that are more unknown like live oak bank and others.

Choosing either of those two group to compare to, which since gotta was an unknown online bank seems far more appropriate than a legacy retail bank, and yotta’s interest rate is bad.

For fucks sake, Nobody's comparing anything, I'm just replying to a guy who said "Most major banks did not offer such a rate in a generic mass market liquid savings product."

Just because there exists a few places you can get such interest rates doesn't make that an untrue statement.

This was a high yield savings account. They allowed some withdrawals at any time. No minimum balance but I can’t remember for sure.

Marcus (Goldman Sachs) high yield savings was 4.50% until revenetly. EverBank is at 4.75% right now. These are normal savings accounts.

How does Everbank offer rates above the fed rate? Wealthfront offers good rates but they track the fed rate pretty closely.

The account may be a loss leader for them. It's definitely a legit bank; used to be owned by TIAA, and was called TIAA Bank for a while. They've tracked the fed rate for the whole year, so it's not a special temporary deal. The current rate only applies to new accounts; no idea how well established accounts track the rate.

Yes but I don’t perceive them as a “major US bank”. I was expecting that term to mean the largest banks for typical consumers like Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Chase. Everbank is small, and GS is mostly an investment bank rather than a retail bank.

US Bank[1] which is the second oldest and fifth largest[2] US bank currently has 3.5% on their Money Market account which is basically an HYSA.

[1]: https://www.usbank.com/bank-accounts/savings-accounts/elite-...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bancorp

Marcus, which is GS Bank, is certainly a retail product aimed at consumers.

Capital One, Discover, Ally, etc. were offering 4.35% at the peak. Not quite as good, but very decent for a savings account.

I don't know where you would draw the line under "major", though. But everyone knows BoA, WF, and Chase are trash when it comes to savings rates. They don't do it.

In Europe, HSBC (which is comparable in size to Chase and BoA) has reliably high saving accounts rates. HSBC UK was offering 5% until recently, I believe.

Hell, Fidelity pays 235 bps on checking and 435 on money market, which you can have them programmatically move everything over a fixed dollar amount in your checking into [1].

[1] https://www.fidelity.com/spend-save/fidelity-cash-management...

The default CMA cash position can be a money market now, so you dont need to move things around to get the better rate.

> the largest banks for typical consumers like Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Chase

These banks are up front about not competing on rates.

I wouldn't call them "being upfront" at all.

They promote their savings accounts with opening bonuses, offer bonus rates for high net worth account holders (up to 0.04% instead of 0.01!!) etc.

Transparency would be not calling these terrible offers "savings" accounts (or sometimes even "high-yield savings accounts!") in the first place.

People should just dump their cash savings into brokerage accounts and buy SGOV. It's even mostly state tax free.

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