California Deposit Account Rates and Deals

First Citizens Bank is offering a special 2.00% APY 11-month CD. Minimum deposit is $1,000, and the maximum is $1 million. A checking account is required. This special doesn't appear to be listed at the bank's website. It was advertised in today's (3/14/2010) Riverside Press-Enterprise newspaper. The ad is available online here.

First Citizens Bank has branches in several states. However, CD rates appear to vary based on the region. I had called First Citizens last Monday regarding another CD special (2.15% 18-mo CD), and that was available at First Citizen's North Carolina branches but not at its California branches (see review). This 11-month CD special may only be available in Southern California. The ad only lists the branches in the cities of Temecula (951-694-9940), Murrieta (951-461-0411) and Corona (951-270-3233). For other cities, check with your local First Citizens branch to confirm the availability of the CD special. Branches are located in North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Maryland, Tennessee, Washington, California, Virginia and West Virginia.

First Citizens Bank has been expanding in the last few years with much of the expansion coming from the acquisition of failed banks. The latest acquisition was on March 5th when it acquired Sun American Bank in South Florida. For those in South Florida, keep an eye on these former Sun American branches. Banks that acquire failed banks often will offer competitive CD specials at the branches of the failed bank.

First Citizens Bank's ratings for safety and soundness are strong: 5 stars (superior) at BauerFinancial (based on 12/31/09 data) and 4 stars (sound) at Bankrate.com (based on 9/30/09 data). The bank has been a FDIC member since 1934 (FDIC Certificate # 11063).

Last Sunday I reviewed First Citizen Bank's FreeMoney debit card reward program.

Other Competitive Certificate of Deposit Rates

• CD rates at DepositAccounts.com
• My weekly list of hot nationwide and local CD deals

BBVA Compass Bank is offering another bonus of up to $150 for opening a new checking account, using online bill pay and direct deposit. Here's the promotion page link. It's not as good as the January promotion since the $150 is not all cash. $50 of the bonus is a hotel gift card. Here are the important details of this new promotion:

• Open a new Build-to-Order checking account online by 3/31/2010 (small print says 3/31 even though headlines say 4/30)
• $100 cash when you establish a recurring payroll direct deposit by 04/30/2010
• $50 hotel gift card when you pay at least one bill for at least $25 to an unrelated third party via online bill pay by 04/01/2010

Note, according to the small print, the $50 hotel gift card is also available for existing BBVA Compass checking customers who haven't used online bill pay in the last 90 days. I don't know the "true" value of the hotel gift card. It can only be used for hotels booked at www.myhotelgiftcard.com and requires a two night minimum stay.

Requirements for Opening Compass Bank Accounts:

• Must be a U.S. Citizen
• Have a permanent residence within a state where BBVA Compass has a banking center (Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, or Texas) and your permanent residence must be located in close proximity to a BBVA Compass banking center.

BBVA Compass now has branches in California after its acquisition of the failed Guaranty Bank last August. However, these branches may not be transitioned over yet to allow people to qualify for these Compass promotions. If you're in California and interested in this promo, it may be worth a call to Compass.

BBVA Compass Checking Accounts

I completed a Compass checking promotion in 2006 and received the promised $50 gift card without any problems. One downside is that I did received two hard credit inquiries by Transunion.

The Build-to-Order Free Checking comes with some basic features. Two additional premium features are allowed without cost. The notable basic feature is no minimum balance or direct deposit requirement. Also, bill pay is free. The notable premium feature for those who want to make extra money is a $25 anniversary cash bonus. One feature that is lacking is free checks. A reader in a previous Compass post mentioned that the first order of checks is free.

The disclosure has some of the details of $25 anniversary cash bonus feature. I switched my Compass checking account to this Build-to-Order Free Checking in December 2007 and chose the $25 anniversary cash bonus as one of my premium features. Then I set up small monthly ACH debits from my online bank account to keep the checking active. I received the $25 bonus for both 2008 and 2009.

BBVA Compass Bank is a member FDIC (FDIC Certificate # 19048).

Credit for this find goes to this iBankDesign thread.

Other Bank Bonuses

To find other bonus deals, please refer to my best bank bonuses page which has all of my recent bank bonus posts.

Chevron Federal Credit Union is offering two competitive CD specials: a 1.90% APY 15-month CD and a 2.30% APY 20-month CD. Minimum deposit is $500. These specials are listed in the credit union's promotions page as of 3/12/2010. According to the credit union, these are scheduled to last until 3/19/2010 or until the promotional limit is reached.

As you might expect, Chevron employees and employees of related companies can be eligible to join. In addition to employee groups, you can also be eligible to join if you live, work, attend school or worship in San Francisco. Please refer to the credit union's membership page for the full details.

Branches are located in the California cities of Bakersfield, Brea, Concord, El Segundo, Richmond, San Ramon and San Francisco.

The credit union's ratings for safety and soundness are strong: 5 stars (superior) at BauerFinancial (based on 12/31/09 data) and 4 stars (sound) at Bankrate.com (based on 9/30/09 data). The credit union is federally insured by the NCUA (Charter # 24326).

First Entertainment Credit Union is offering a fairly competitive CD special: 1.75% APY 11-month CD. Minimum deposit is $1,000, and new money is required. This special is listed in the credit union's rates page as of 3/12/2010.

First Entertainment Credit Union also has a savings account called Firt500 Savings in which you can earn 7% APY on your first $500. To qualify for this yield, you're required to have a checking account with eStatements and either Online Billpayer or Direct Deposit. The low cap prevents this from being a great deal. You only can make about $30/year more than what you would make in a 1.00% savings account. You won't want to join the credit union for this, but it's an extra bonus if you join for the CD.

This credit union regularly comes out with some attractive CD deals. Last November they were offering a 2.09% 18-month special CD and in 2007 they were offering a 6% CD. A reader commented about opening these certificates in 2007 and thought "they were easy to deal with and pleasant."

Membership is open to most individuals who live, work, attend school or worship in the Greater Los Angeles Area. You can also be eligible via select employee groups and via family members (and not just immediate family). Please refer to the credit union's Becoming a Member Page for more details. Membership requires a one-time fee of $5 and a minimum deposit of $5 into the First500 Savings Account.

Branches are located in the California cities of Burbank, Hollywood, Culver City, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Studio City and Valencia.

First Entertainment Credit Union's ratings for safety and soundness are mixed: 4 stars (excellent) at BauerFinancial (based on 12/31/09 data) and 2 stars (below peer group) at Bankrate.com (based on 9/30/09 data). Both ratings are based on 6/30/09 financial data. The credit union is federally insured by the NCUA (Charter # 68373).

Bank of the West has extended its $100 checking account bonus. According to the bank's promotions page, the new checking account must be opened by 4/16/2010. You can receive a $100 when you open a checking account with funds new to Bank of the West and set up direct deposit of at least $250 OR pay 10 bills online. I reviewed the small print in this January post.

Update: It appears Bank of the West has changed the availability of the promotion since January. According to the CSR, online account opening is limited to states which have Bank of the West branches. These states include AZ, CA, CO, ID, IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, NV, NM, ND, OK, OR, SD, UT, WA, WI and WY.

When I contacted the bank in January, I was told this bonus was available to people in any state, and you didn't need to come into a branch. Readers seemed to confirm this in the comments in January. Here's one of the comments:

We did this offer in late 2009 as well. We did NOT visit a local branch. We filled out the application online. We used direct deposit to fulfill the requirement. $100 bonus was paid eventually.

If you have participated in similar promotions in the past, please leave a comment about your experience.

Also from my January call, I was told they don't do a hard credit inquiry in the application (only a soft pull). So you shouldn't have to worry about a ding to your credit score. It should be noted that I've often received wrong info on this issue from CSRs so please leave a comment if you have personal experience on this issue.

Checking Account with no ATM Fees for One Year

Bank of the West's free checking account qualifies for the bonus. In addition, they have a new checking account called Choice ATM checking which offers one year of free ATM use within the USA. This allows you to withdraw cash from any financial institution's ATM free of charge for one year. Surcharges assessed by other banks will be automatically refunded. One thing to note about this Choice ATM Checking is that you have to worry about a $10 monthly fee unless you meet certain balance or activity requirements. Also, Choice ATM checking is only offered in the following states: CA, CO, MN, NV, OK and OR.

Online Savings Account

Bank of the West continues to offer an online savings account with a competitive yield. It has gone down from 1.50% APY in January to 1.25% APY as of today (3/10/10). Unfortunately, 1.25% APY is a decent savings account rate these days. This rate requires a $10,000 minimum balance. The low tier rate has also gone down by 0.25%. It's now 0.25% APY for balances under $10,000. In August I was told by the CSR that there's a $2/month fee if the balance falls below $300. Another downside is that their ACH bank-to-bank transfer service has a transfer limit of $2,000 per day.

Bank Overview

Branches are located throughout the Western and Midwestern states including Oklahoma, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon and California.

Bank of the West is one of the large regional banks with $60 billion in assets and $40.2 billion in deposits. Its ratings for safety and soundness are a little weak: 3 stars (adequate) at BauerFinancial (based on 12/31/09 data) and 1 star (lowest) at Bankrate.com (based on 9/30/09 data). The bank has been a FDIC member since 1934 (FDIC Certificate # 3514).

Other Bank Bonuses

To find other bonus deals, please refer to my bank bonus page which has all of my recent bank bonus posts.

Firsts Citizens Bank has a check card reward program called FreeMoney in which you can earn close to 4% cash back on your debit card purchases with a maximum of $500 per year. Unlike other debit card and credit card cash back reward programs, this requires some work if you want to maximize the cash back reward.

First, you're required to open the First Citizens personal checking account and FreeMoney Bonus Savings Account. To earn cash back, the following debit card usage is required:

• Make 10 non-PIN check card purchases per month
• AFTER these 10 check card purchases are made, you'll earn $1 for every non-PIN check card purchase of $25 or more.
• The FreeMoney bonus is deposited into the FreeMoney Bonus Savings Account each month

According to the terms and conditions, the maximum bonus per checking account is $500 per calendar year.

As you can see, it won't be easy to get close to 4% cash back from this program. Your first 10 check card purchases would have to be small since there's no cash back associated with them. The additional check card purchases during the month would have to be $25 or just a little bit higher. Then you could get close to earning 4% cash back. Of course if it were too easy, everybody would earn the 4%, and the bank wouldn't be able to afford it.

A branch visit is required to open an account. Branches are located throughout North Carolina. It also has branches in Arizona, Maryland, Tennessee, Washington, California, Virginia and West Virginia.

You might be wondering why the branches are so scattered across the country. First Citizens Bank has been expanding in the last several months with much of the expansion coming from the acquisition of failed banks. The latest acquisition was on Friday when it acquired Sun American Bank in South Florida.

First Citizens Bank's ratings for safety and soundness are strong: 5 stars (superior) at BauerFinancial (based on 12/31/09 data) and 4 stars (sound) at Bankrate.com (based on 9/30/09 data). The bank has been a FDIC member since 1934 (FDIC Certificate # 11063)

Other debit card and credit card reward programs

As I've mentioned in previous posts, banks make sizable profits from non-PIN debit card usage. This is one new type of program that encourages debit card use. PerkStreet Financial is one that's available nationwide which offers 1% cash back without any hoops to jump through. It also has a special 2% cash back promo (see review). For those with large savings, you'll probably do better with high-yield reward checking accounts (refer to the reward checking section of DepositAccounts.com).

If you prefer using credit cards, some of the best cash back programs are from PenFed, Charles Schwab and Fidelity.

Alaska USA Credit Union is offering some competitive rates. The most competitive include a 2.01% APY 18-month CD, a 2.25% APY 24-month CD and a 3.35% APY 60-month CD. Minimum deposit is $500. These are also available in an IRA. These rates are listed in the credit union's certificates rates page as of 3/02/2010.

The 2.01% APY may seem low for an 18-month term, but I'm afraid it's competitive these days. As a comparison, the top 18-month CD rate at Bankrate is currently 1.84% APY at Aurora Bank.

In addition to Alaska, the credit union has branches in several parts of Washington State and in the Victor Valley region of California. Last year they took over Members’ Own Federal Credit Union of Victorville, California through a NCUA purchase agreement. Refer to the credit union's branch location page for the full details.

Alaska USA doesn't provide many details on membership eligibility. The credit union's membership page recommends that you contact the credit union to find out if you are eligible. It appears there's a good chance you can be eligible if you live near one of their branches. If you have experience with this credit union, please leave a comment.

The credit union's ratings for safety and soundness are a little weak: 3 stars (adequate) at BauerFinancial and 2 stars (below peer group) at Bankrate.com. Both ratings are based on 9/30/09 financial data. Alaska USA is a large credit union with $4.0 billion in assets and 357,369 members. It's federally insured by the NCUA (Charter # 5913).

Northrop Grumman Federal Credit Union is offering special 9-month, 18-month, 30-month and 60-month CDs and IRA CDs. Unfortunately, these are not available to all members (see below). The best rates require a $40K minimum deposit. These are listed at the credit union's rates page as of 2/26/2010 and include:

• 1.92% APY 9 months
• 2.41% APY 18 months
• 2.81% APY 30 months
• 3.63% APY 60 months

Rates are about 25 basis points lower for a $2,500 minimum.

Unfortunately, unlike NGFCU's standard CDs, these specials are available to NGFCU members of record prior to 1/31/2010 and to NGC and LA Metro employees and their family members who are not current members. Note, this restriction is stated near the top of the rates page. This is the same promotion that NGFCU did last year (and the year before), so if you're not already a member, you may want to join now so you can take advantage if they offer this again next year.

For those who don't qualify for these promotions, NGFCU continues to have some competitive rates on its regular CDs. These are listed at the credit union's rates page as of 2/26/2010, and the most competitive ones include:

• 1.63% APY 6 months
• 1.87% APY 12 months
• 2.15% APY 24 months
• 3.32% APY 48 months

The above rates require a minimum deposit of $40K. Rates are about 25 basis points lower for a $2.5K minimum.

Membership Eligibility

Anyone can qualify for NGFUC membership by joining the Southern California Historical Aircraft Foundation (SCHAF). The credit union website has an online application link that takes you to the Andera service where you can join the SCHAF, join the credit union and open accounts. According to the first page of the Andera application:

Members of the Southern California Historical Aircraft Foundation (SCHAF). When you join using this method, you will receive a free one-year membership in SCHAF concurrent with your lifetime Credit Union membership.

Refer to the credit union's eligibility page for more details. For more details about membership and their certificates, please refer to my 2008 Northrop Grumman FCU review post.

NGFCU has branches in several cities of California, Illinois, Maryland, Virginia, Louisiana and Florida.

NGFCU ratings for safety and soundness are above average: 5 stars (superior) at BauerFinancial and 3 stars (performing) at Bankrate.com. Both ratings are based on 9/30/09 financial data. The credit union is federally insured by the NCUA (Charter # 24292).

CommerceWest Bank is offering a high-yield reward checking account with the following rates and features if certain monthly requirements are met:

• 3.00% APY on balances up to $25,000
• 1.01% APY on portion of balance over $25,000
• 0.05% base rate if requirements are not met
• ATM fee refunds nationwide

The monthly requirements include:

• 12 debit card purchases
• 1 recurring Direct Deposit, ACH Auto Debit, or Online Bill Payment
• Receive e-statements

Other features of the account include:

• No minimum balance
• No monthly service charge
• Free NetBanker Online Banking with BillPay

The bank also offers a companion savings account called RealSavings with the following rates if the above RewardChecking requirements are met:

• 2.00% APY on balances up to $25,000
• 1.01% APY on portion of balance over $25,000
• 0.05% base rate if requirements are not met

There's an online application on the micro-website. However, on the first page, I don't see an "open a new account" button as mentioned in the instructions. I've sent an email asking about this. Hopefully, the accounts are still available.

This appears to be a local deal limited to those in the Los Angeles metro area. Here is what is mentioned on the website:

we're expanding our services to personal clients in Irvine, Carson, Corona, and the rest of greater Los Angeles

Branches are located in the California cities of Irvine, Corona, Los Angeles, Newport Beach, Poway, San Marcos and Gardena.

The bank's ratings for safety and soundness are a little mixed: 3½ stars (good) at BauerFinancial and 2 stars (below peer group) at Bankrate.com. Both ratings are based on 9/30/09 financial data. The bank has been a FDIC member since 2001 (FDIC Certificate # 57176).

Reward Checking/Savings Combo

As I mentioned yesterday these companion savings accounts are becoming more popular for banks to offer with their reward checking accounts. It can be useful for those with more than $25K in savings. However, for the case of CommerceWest, it doesn't help too much more since the savings account also has a $25K tier.

Other Reward Checking Accounts

There are still nationwide reward checking accounts paying 4% (see post) and a few local accounts paying over 5% (see post). However, rates under 4% are becoming more common, and anything at 3% or above is a decent deal for reward checking rates.

To find nationwide reward checking accounts and reward checking accounts in your local area, please refer to the reward checking section of DepositAccounts.com.

Community Trust Credit Union is offering some competitive CD and IRA CD rates. These include a 2.07% APY 12-month CD, a 2.17% APY 18-month CD and a 2.33% APY 24-month CD. Minimum deposit is $2,500. These rates are listed in the credit union's rates page as of the morning of 2/11/2010.

I have a feeling these rates won't last much longer. This credit union is a division of Self-Help Federal Credit Union which just recently lowered its 12-month and 24-month CD rates last week. However, Community Trust's CDs have some differences so they may not be in lock-step with SHFCU.

Like the SHFCU, membership is open to anyone who joins the Center for Community Self-Help. Refer to the credit union's membership eligibility page for more details.

Branches are located in the California cities of San Jose, Bakersfield, East Palo Alto, Lamont, Modesto, Porterville and Riverbank.

For more info on Community Trust's parent, Self-Help Federal Credit Union, refer to my last SHFCU review. SHFCU is federally insured by the NCUA (Charter # 24802).