Bank Deals Blog: Banking Tools and Data

One of the things we’re proud of at DepositAccounts is how our patented rate-tracking technology isn’t built to monitor only banks, whose products dominate the coverage by most sites that list deposit rates. In the data universe we opted to create, more than 4,000 credit unions also populate our rate tables. Ranging from those with over a hundred thousand members and nationwide availability to tiny ones with a single branch and a mere one hundred members, credit unions play a fully co-starring role alongside banks on our stage of national,...

A year and a half ago, we focused our data microscope on a question that comes up from time to time: do smaller or larger financial institutions offer better deposit rates? Or maybe it’s the mid-sized banks and credit unions? Our test hypothesis was what most savvy savers will anecdotally tell you from their rate shopping, that the biggest players typically pay the least. And indeed our 2015 analysis bore that out. But does that equate to the smallest institutions paying the most?

Since we last sharpened our pencils on this,...

As many readers know, a major focus here at DepositAccounts has always been on tracking and organizing as much helpful data as we can gather on banks, credit unions, and their deposit products. This focus (and the technology that drives this initiative) has resulted in a very large data set – which includes more than a quarter million rates, as featured by our rate tables – and the discovery of many of the attractive deals that we cover here on the Bank Deals Blog.

One less publicized aspect of our...

If I utter the phrase “J.D. Power Ratings”, I’ll bet you a dollar I can guess what pops into your mind. It’s probably a memory of the last time you bought a new or used car. Maybe you were trying to figure out whether people are happier with their Toyota Highlanders or their Nissan Pathfinders, or which sedan is more dependable, the Ford Fusion or the Honda Accord. Whatever car model one’s considering, J.D. Power can ply you with a wide array of metrics to help (or perhaps complicate?) your...

I have a favorite podcast. It’s called Planet Money, produced by NPR, and it bills itself as “The economy explained, with stories and surprises”. I’ve listened to hundreds of the show’s short episodes over the years, but one has been my favorite ever since it aired in 2010. It’s succinctly titled "Why Gold?" and it immediately came to mind when I conceived of the analysis we’re about to dig into.

That’s because “Why Gold?” started with the periodic table of Earth’s 118 elements and, criteria by practical criteria, whittled it down...

By now, many of us handle a good portion of our routine bank business by computer or smartphone. We can log in to check balances, transfer funds, and send payments. And we can deposit checks using our bank’s app in tandem with our phone’s camera. The ability to manage our deposit accounts from wherever we are, and without stepping foot inside a physical branch, has not only never been greater, it’s likely to continue expanding.

So with the necessity of brick...

We have made an enhancement to the rate table pages. It’s an enhancement that is easy to miss. At the bottom of each of the major rate tables, a chart is included that displays the trend of the average APY of all the banks and credit unions that we track. This is intended to help you see where rates are headed. It also can be useful to see how the Fed rate hikes are affecting deposit rates.

These average yield charts are located at the bottom of the major rate...

If you regularly shop for the best CD rates, you know this truth: that the best deals don’t always come in tidy conventional packages.

Follow the DepositAccounts blog with any frequency and you’ll see featured CDs with maturity terms of 150 days, 19 months, two and a half years – you name it. The same is true if you hunt for top rates in any of our CD rate tables. You’ll find abundant evidence that the FDIC and NCUA have imposed no requirements that CDs be issued in even, yearly terms.

The following contribution is from Sabrina Karl. Sabrina is a data journalist with years of experience covering the consumer deposits sector, and we’re excited to have her delving into our proprietary database of deposits data to uncover stories like the one below.

With it looking likely that the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates again this week, it's tempting to matter-of-factly declare that this will mean good news for savers. And the odds of that correlation are certainly better than even.

Over the past year, we embarked on a major behind-the-scenes categorization project covering the almost six thousand federally-insured credit unions in the United States.

As many readers know, each credit union maintains its own unique set of field of membership requirements as part of its charter. These membership requirements dictate who can...