Review of Capital One’s Savings Account Promotion

A few online banks have coupled rate hikes with new-money bonuses to attract more deposits. Capital One has long been one of these banks, but last week it upped the ante with an unusually large rate hike. That rate hike makes Capital One’s current bonus offer especially attractive for those who don’t have a Capital One account. Unlike Ally Bank’s promo, this one is just for new customers (more details below).

Now through December 14, 2022, Capital One is offering a bonus of up to $1,000 when opening a new 360 Performance Savings account. That’s an improvement over previous bonus offers that maxed out at $500.

Qualification requirements are similar to its past promotions and include,

• Open a new 360 Performance Savings account by December 14, 2022, using promo code FALL22.
• Deposit $10k or more of new money within 15 days of account opening (Initial Funding Period).
• Hold the money in your account for 90 days following the Initial Funding Period.

The three bonus tiers are based on the size of the new funds deposited during the Initial Funding Period:

• $100 bonus for $10k to under $50k in deposits
• $500 bonus for $50k to under $100k in deposits
• $1,000 bonus for more than $100k in deposits

As mentioned above, this bonus is primarily intended for new customers. Those who haven’t had Capital One accounts since before 2019 can also qualify. The Capital One fine print on this requirement is as followings:

If you have or had an open 360 Performance Savings, 360 Savings, 360 Money Market, Savings Now or Confidence Savings account as a primary or secondary account holder with Capital One on or after January 1, 2019, you will be ineligible for the bonus. If your account is in default, closed or suspended, or otherwise not in good standing, you will not receive the bonus.

Capital One will deposit the bonus into your 360 Performance Savings account within 60 days of completing the above-mentioned requirements, including fulfilling the 90-day holding period.

Many thanks to DA reader, My2centsworth, for posting this bonus deal in the Forum

360 Performance Savings

Last Friday I reviewed the large rate hike at Capital One which increased the 360 Performance Savings account rate from 2.35% to 3.00% APY. That moved it ahead of most of the major online banks like Ally, Synchrony and Marcus. Since it was launched in late 2019, the 360 Performance Savings account rate has generally been slightly below the average rate of online savings accounts.

For more details about the 360 Performance Savings account, including account features, please refer to the October 4, 2019 blog post.

Availability

Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, Capital One offers its 360 savings products online or through the Capital One Mobile app. Any U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident, 18 years or older, with a U.S. physical address or a military address (APO or FPO) and a valid Social Security number, can open an account at Capital One.

For this promotion, be sure to apply using the promo code FALL22 at this Capital One landing page.

To fund the new Capital One account, you’ll need to link your Capital One account to a personal (non-business) checking or savings account at another U.S. chartered bank.

In the online application, Capital One provides this instruction regarding opening a joint account:

First, you'll need to open an individual account. Then, you can add the other person as a joint account holder online.

Bank Overview

Capital One has an overall health grade of "A" at DepositAccounts.com, with a Texas Ratio of 3.47% (excellent), based on June 30, 2022 data. In the past year, Capital One has increased its total non-brokered deposits by $10.11 billion, an excellent annual growth rate of 3.38%. Please refer to our financial overview of Capital One (FDIC Certificate # 4297) for more details.

Capital One acquired the internet bank, ING Direct, in 2012 and shortly afterward, ING Direct was transformed into Capital One 360. Operating as a subsidiary of Capital One Financial Corporation for about four years, Capital One 360 was absorbed into Capital One in 2017. Although Capital One 360 no longer exists as a separate entity, the Capital One 360 products are still available from Capital One.

Capital One Financial Corporation is a financial holding company whose subsidiaries include Capital One, N.A., and Capital One Bank (USA), N.A. The combined total assets of both subsidiaries are in excess of $515 billion, with about 300 branches operating primarily in the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Virginia.

How the Bonus Compares

If Capital One continues to keep the rate competitive on the 360 Performance Savings, you won’t lose out much on interest as you maintain the required balance to qualify for the bonus. If your deposit remains at the minimum level, you’ll earn 1% bonus on your deposit on top of the interest that you earn. However, you’re only required to maintain the deposit for 90 days. Earning a 1% bonus in three months results in an annualized return of 4%. Let’s say you maintained a balance of $100k for three months, the $1,000 bonus would effectively add 4% to the interest rate earned for those four months.

The 1% bonus from Capital One equals the bonus from Ally’s recent promotion. It’s a tad less than the current Discover bonus which offers a bonus amount of up to 1.29% ($450 bonus from a $35k deposit). The maximum $1k bonus easily tops the max bonus of Ally’s promotion ($500) and Discover’s promotion ($450). For the time requirement, Discover wins this category without a hold time. Ally’s hold time is just under three months. At a full 90 days, Capital One’s hold time is the longest. Out of the three promotions, only Ally is allowing existing customers to participate.

DA maintains a full list of the best savings and checking account bonus offers currently available.

The above rates are accurate as of 10/31/2022.