EmigrantDirect Savings Account to 5% on July 4th
Jul 3, 2006 - 7:36 PM by Ken Tumin
There are rumors that EmigrantDirect will be raising the rate on its savings account to 5% on the Fourth of July. Several people have reported to have confirmed this with Emigrant on this FW thread.
Ever since HSBC ended its 4.80% promo in May, Emigrant has closely followed rate hikes at HSBC. Looks like this trend will continue. It's not as good as last year when Emigrant took the lead and beat its competitors to new higher rates. But having grown its deposits to $6 billion, Emigrant probably doesn't feel the need to be that aggressive. At least it hasn't become an ING Direct.
I wonder what will be the new rates for Emigrant's My Way CDs. Currently the My Way CD rate is only 5% APY. With a savings account rate at 5%, we should see these CD rates increase. These CDs have been stuck at 5% since Emigrant launched these back in mid March. Instead of raising these CD rates, Emigrant has just reduced the minimum term from 18 months to 3 months. It'll be interesting to see if they just increase the CD rate or perhaps also increase the term back to 18 months.
Another question about Emigrant is what happened to the website upgrade? According to the letter that customers received in early June, a site upgrade with new security and enhanced features was suppose to come online by the end of June.
Emigrant could be having other issues that may be keeping it busy. If you're an Emigrant customer, have you noticed any new spam in your email lately? I have, but I use my email address for several things so I can't pinpoint it to being related to Emigrant. However, a few people have reported on this FW thread that they've received spam to their email addresses that are dedicated just to EmigrantDirect.
Ever since HSBC ended its 4.80% promo in May, Emigrant has closely followed rate hikes at HSBC. Looks like this trend will continue. It's not as good as last year when Emigrant took the lead and beat its competitors to new higher rates. But having grown its deposits to $6 billion, Emigrant probably doesn't feel the need to be that aggressive. At least it hasn't become an ING Direct.
I wonder what will be the new rates for Emigrant's My Way CDs. Currently the My Way CD rate is only 5% APY. With a savings account rate at 5%, we should see these CD rates increase. These CDs have been stuck at 5% since Emigrant launched these back in mid March. Instead of raising these CD rates, Emigrant has just reduced the minimum term from 18 months to 3 months. It'll be interesting to see if they just increase the CD rate or perhaps also increase the term back to 18 months.
Another question about Emigrant is what happened to the website upgrade? According to the letter that customers received in early June, a site upgrade with new security and enhanced features was suppose to come online by the end of June.
Emigrant could be having other issues that may be keeping it busy. If you're an Emigrant customer, have you noticed any new spam in your email lately? I have, but I use my email address for several things so I can't pinpoint it to being related to Emigrant. However, a few people have reported on this FW thread that they've received spam to their email addresses that are dedicated just to EmigrantDirect.
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Anonymous - #1, Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - 12:59 AM
Dear Banking Guy,
A while back their was a bank with a variable CD rate 1 percent less than prime. Their rate was to reset on July 1. I'm sure their rate is now around 7% as prime is sitting around 7.75% - 8.00%.
Do you have any tips on this...
scott61 (anonymous) - #2, Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - 7:02 AM
Emigrant has increased the "My Way CD" is now 5.35% but has gone back to a 6 month min term
Anonymous - #3, Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - 7:18 AM
My wife and I each had unique Email addresses at Emigrant. We both received spam. The spam was sent daily, touting stock opportunities (no doubt for the spammer). I killed the addresses and forwarded a sample Email to the bank.
I expressed my concern that Email addresses were one thing, personal information another. Did the breach transcend Email. The bank never responded…
Banking Guy (anonymous) - #4, Tuesday, July 4, 2006 - 8:29 AM
Here's the post about the prime-1 CD. They don't seem to be offering this CD anymore.
Thanks Scott on the My Way CD update. I've posted on it here.
About the spam issue, there sure seems to be some type of problem at Emigrant's end. Emigrant seems to heavily contract out various operations. Perhaps some marketing company didn't properly protect the email addresses.
As you mentioned, email addresses is one thing, but our account related information is far more serious. I hope Emigrant has protections in place to ensure this is never compromised.
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