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Retirement Savings: How Much Should I Save Each Month?High Yield Reward Checking Gets More Publicity - Wall Street Journal Article
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POSTED
ON BY Ken Tumin
Wall Street Journal came out with an article yesterday on reward checking accounts. With rates on CDs and savings account falling like a rock, the 6% yields offered by many reward checking accounts are attracting attention.
The article has a few new tidbits of info. It mentioned that Bancvue (the main provider of reward checking to financial institutions) has about 400 banks and credit unions with these accounts. This up from 300 since I last saw this stat, so Bancvue must be having success growing reward checking. I've only reported on about 100 reward checking accounts in the last year. So there are many more reward checking accounts to report.
The article repeated Bancvue's statistic that these accounts are on average twice as profitable to those financial institutions as a free checking account. It doesn't discuss if these reward checking accounts can maintain rates significantly higher than online savings account rates.
New Nationwide Reward Checking Accounts
The article mentioned 3 banks offering these reward checking accounts nationwide. The first one mentioned was State Bank of Toledo which I first reported on in June 2007. The second one is a reward checking that I just mentioned last week. It's at Southern Community Bank & Trust, and it offers a 6.00% APY for balances up to $25K. When I contacted the bank last week, I was told that they require a branch visit. I just sent the bank a message to see if the WSJ article made a mistake. The third bank was new to me. I just did a post on this. It's The Bank of Fayetteville. The yield is only 5.01% APY but the cap is $50K, so it's similar to The State Bank of Toledo which now has a 5.01% APY and $70K cap. I've sent a message to this bank to confirm that it's really available nationwide.
I have an updated list of reward checking accounts available nationwide in my weekly summary.
For more info on reward checking accounts, please refer to the following:
Thanks to the reader who sent me an email on this article.
The article has a few new tidbits of info. It mentioned that Bancvue (the main provider of reward checking to financial institutions) has about 400 banks and credit unions with these accounts. This up from 300 since I last saw this stat, so Bancvue must be having success growing reward checking. I've only reported on about 100 reward checking accounts in the last year. So there are many more reward checking accounts to report.
The article repeated Bancvue's statistic that these accounts are on average twice as profitable to those financial institutions as a free checking account. It doesn't discuss if these reward checking accounts can maintain rates significantly higher than online savings account rates.
New Nationwide Reward Checking Accounts
The article mentioned 3 banks offering these reward checking accounts nationwide. The first one mentioned was State Bank of Toledo which I first reported on in June 2007. The second one is a reward checking that I just mentioned last week. It's at Southern Community Bank & Trust, and it offers a 6.00% APY for balances up to $25K. When I contacted the bank last week, I was told that they require a branch visit. I just sent the bank a message to see if the WSJ article made a mistake. The third bank was new to me. I just did a post on this. It's The Bank of Fayetteville. The yield is only 5.01% APY but the cap is $50K, so it's similar to The State Bank of Toledo which now has a 5.01% APY and $70K cap. I've sent a message to this bank to confirm that it's really available nationwide.
I have an updated list of reward checking accounts available nationwide in my weekly summary.
For more info on reward checking accounts, please refer to the following:
- Directory of High Yield Reward Checking Accounts
- History of Reward Checking Accounts
- Bankrate article and review of Reward Checking
- Reward Checking Accounts around the nation
Thanks to the reader who sent me an email on this article.