Countrywide's Savings Account Now 5.40% for $50K+
Dec 16, 2006 - 3:04 PM by Ken Tumin
Countrywide Bank increased the rate on its Savingslink savings account from 5.30% to 5.40% APY for balances of $50K and over. The APY of 5.25% remains the same for balances from $10K to $50K. Balances under $10K now earn 4.00% APY. This had been 4.50% when I reported on this in August.
I first mentioned this Savingslink account in this May 19th post. It's very similar to other online savings accounts. You can fund the account online with an ACH transfer or by wire or check. There are no minimum balance requirements and no monthly fees. However, the minimum opening deposit is $1K. As of November 2006, you can only link one external account to your Savingslink account. They use to allow up to three. One important note regarding Countrywide is that it has been reported that it does a hard credit pull for every new account that you open.
Countrywide had just recently been advertising 5.50% APY 3-month certificate of deposit. However, this rate is now down to 5.40% APY. Countrywide's CD yield curve continues to be very inverted. The CDs with terms from 30 months to 84 months only have a rate of 4.80% APY.
Countrywide Bank is FDIC insured. It has a safe-and-sound rating of 3 out of 5 stars (performing) from Bankrate.com.
[Edit 12/16/06: Corrected the number of links that are now allowed to Savingslink]
I first mentioned this Savingslink account in this May 19th post. It's very similar to other online savings accounts. You can fund the account online with an ACH transfer or by wire or check. There are no minimum balance requirements and no monthly fees. However, the minimum opening deposit is $1K. As of November 2006, you can only link one external account to your Savingslink account. They use to allow up to three. One important note regarding Countrywide is that it has been reported that it does a hard credit pull for every new account that you open.
Countrywide had just recently been advertising 5.50% APY 3-month certificate of deposit. However, this rate is now down to 5.40% APY. Countrywide's CD yield curve continues to be very inverted. The CDs with terms from 30 months to 84 months only have a rate of 4.80% APY.
Countrywide Bank is FDIC insured. It has a safe-and-sound rating of 3 out of 5 stars (performing) from Bankrate.com.
[Edit 12/16/06: Corrected the number of links that are now allowed to Savingslink]
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Anonymous - #1, Saturday, December 16, 2006 - 11:51 AM
As of Nov 2006, you can only link 1 external account to your savingslink account. I have 2 accounts linked and they are letting me keep those.
What upsets me more is that I can no longer link my countrywide MMA account to my countrywide savingslink account! So the only way for me to get money out is ACH transfer. Bastids! The MMA pays a respectable 5% too. That was a great rate to get while "waiting" for checks to clear.
Banking Guy (anonymous) - #2, Saturday, December 16, 2006 - 3:08 PM
Thanks for the info. I updated the post with this.
I wonder why they would reduce the number of links? Perhaps they want to make it harder to transfer money out?
And not allowing links between Countrywide accounts is even worse.
Anonymous - #3, Sunday, December 17, 2006 - 3:34 AM
When I called and asked why I could no longer transfer between my savingslink and MMA, they claimed it was for security reasons. I assume they'd claim the same for having more than 1 external bank ACH.
I had been very happy with countrywide up until that point. I was actually going to close out my accounts there, but the bump from 5.3% to 5.4% will keep me for a while.
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