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Comment by kyranjamie | Hacker News Reader

This is how it should work, but not how it does. Dutch banks don't pass down increases in interest rates simply because the risk of losing customers is so low [1]. Dutch consumers don't want, can't be bothered, or have such loyalty to their bank of choice, that even a criminally-low rate won't convince them to switch bank

[1]: https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/acm-savings-rates-lag-beh...

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Dutch consumers don't want, can't be bothered, or have such loyalty to their bank of choice, that even a criminally-low rate won't convince them to switch bank

It is also just very hard in practice. A lot of people have their mortgages, savings that are locked for years, etc. at a bank. Also, switching a bank also impacts other family members if you have shared accounts, etc.

In this particular case it's also not fully clear yet whether Wero is starting to enforce this. If that happens to be the case, it's only a matter of time before other banks also start requiring Play Integrity for Wero transactions.

It's not hard to just move your savings. A lot of people do that actually; just keep the standard banking account for daily payments and all other services, and put savings in bank-managed ETFs, time deposits, or savings accounts with other banks (I do all three).

It's not hard to move your savings but due to some "coincidence" all Dutch banks keep their interest rates within a very narrow band (some advertise with higher interest rates you get for 6 months). Dutch people are very averse to banks outside of the country due to the icesave affair and not trusting that for example Estonia or Italy will actually be able to make them whole in case of a crisis. So in the end are you moving your money from Rabobank to Andolubank (whoever they are) for 0.3% more interest? Probably not.

Savings rates on all savings accounts are useless. Rabobank even has a managed passive investment account that functionally works like a savings account if you really don't want to use funds yourself [0], I think ING does too. If you do use funds or invest otherwise it doesn't matter which bank you use.

0: https://www.rabobank.nl/particulieren/beleggen/rabo-beheerd-...

Reminds me of the tweet i saw: "My bank, who passed all 14 interest rate increases on to my mortgage, and none of them on to my savings account interest, is currently sending me tips on how to spot financial scammers"

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