Joint venture offers accounts paying 4%, with a focus on internet and app banking
Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks have jointly launched a current account paying 4% interest on balances of up to £3,000.
Designed specifically for customers who do their banking online or over the phone, the Current Account Direct will pay the 4% on credit balances, but only until the end of March 2015. After that date the variable rate is predicted to fall to 2%. No interest is paid on balances in excess of £3,000.
The banks, which are both owned by the National Australia Bank Group and offer the same services (albeit independently), say the account also comes with a market-leading standard planned overdraft rate of 9.9%.
Current Account Direct is available to new and existing customers paying in at least £1,000 a month.It can be managed over the telephone, internet or via the banks' newly launched mobile banking smartphone app, but branches can still be used where these channels cannot, such as for paying in cash, as can call centres.
Withdrawals of up to £500 a day are allowed at Link ATMs. Customers can hold a maximum of two Current Account Direct accounts, of which only one may be a sole account.
Retail director Andrew Pearce says: "We've spoken to thousands of people, and one thing that came out clearly was that they wanted a simple, straightforward way of earning interest on the money in their bank account.
"Current Account Direct gives them that. As more and more customers manage their accounts from home or on the move, our account not only fits with that change in lifestyle, but rewards it with a great rate of interest."
The banks will be hoping the savings offer will be enough to tempt people away from one of the traditional big four, which rarely offer interest on money held in current accounts.
Santander's 123 account has been attracting a lot of interest among account switchers, partly because it offers 3% interest on balances between £3,000 and £20,000, at a time when the best instant access accounts are typically paying 1.5%.
This week it emerged that the number of 123 account holders had passed 2 million for the first time.
No comments:
Post a Comment