Has your bank done this? (funds, million, rate, deposit)

[totallyfrazzled]

I guess I should have known this would happen.

During the 10 years that we've been banking with JPMorganChase, they have always had a "tiered" interest rate for savings accounts. If your balance was less than $49,999 you got a certain rate, which was the lowest tier. If your balance was in the next highest category ($50K to $100K) you were entitled to a slightly higher rate. Ditto up the ladder from 101K to 250K. The top rung was balances over 500K which got the highest rate.

Well, not anymore.

Chase has just this past week elimated the tiered interest rate on savings accounts. Now, all savings accounts with balances between $50,000 and $999,999 get the same (lousy!) rate of 1.85%. In order to get anything higher, you have to have at least 1 million in the account.

I sarcastically asked our banker if this is Chase's way of having all their customers who are "savers" help to subsidize the bank's acquisition of Washington Mutual. She said she wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Unfortunately my SO and I are in a situation right now where we have to keep all of our money 100% liquid, so we can't even use a CD to get a higher rate.

Anyway, I was just curious if any other banks have done the same thing recently (eliminated the perk of getting a higher interest rate on higher-balance savings accounts)? Or was Chase simply the 'last bank standing' to still have retained the tiered system?

[harry chickpea]

Just switch the funds to EmigrantDirect and/or Ing. Your money will be as liquid, but with a better rate. The free market works by people seeking out the best deals. Loyalty is so 19th Century.

[taurus430]

You could even look into OnBank with a 3.60% rate.

[totallyfrazzled]

Originally Posted by harry chickpea

Just switch the funds to EmigrantDirect and/or Ing. Your money will be as liquid, but with a better rate. The free market works by people seeking out the best deals. Loyalty is so 19th Century.

Our choice of Chase has nothing to do with brand loyalty; up till now, they have simply always offered the best rates in our area on savings and CDs. Occasionally there were times when other banks (such as WaMu, ironically!) were offering promotional deals on certain accounts, and almost every time when we took evidence of those deals to our banker at Chase, she was able to get us a matching rate. When she couldn't do so, we simply moved part of our money to the competing bank until such time as their advantage no longer existed; then back it went to Chase again.

In today's market, Chase is one of only two very large stable banks in our area (the other is Bank of America but only by virtue of having gobbled up a smaller regional bank, Fleet, a few years ago... which had previously gobbled up a local bank called Norstar) so we feel most comfortable with them anyway.

As for internet banking I'm not ashamed to admit that neither my SO nor I have ever felt comfortable with that idea. I know that millions of people use them, etc etc, but there are certain things that we just WILL NOT do because we're just not comfortable with the security issues. Putting any kind of bank information, or any part of a SS number, onto any website whatsover is one of them. There have been enough security breaches of banks and investment companies to make it certain that I'd lose sleep at night if any of my money was in an online account.

Anyway my original question wasn't a complaint about how much we are getting in interest; it was a query about whether anyone else's bank has eliminated the tiered-interest-rate on savings in favor of a single rate regardless of whether the depositor has a low or high balance.