Bank Deals Blog: Banking Tools and Data

Do you carry cash? Are you carrying cash right now? If you had to make a cash purchase, would you need to make a quick trip to the ATM? If you answered no to the first two questions and yes to the last, you’re hardly alone.

The rise of fintech start-ups, electronic payment apps and online banking — not to mention the ubiquity of credit cards and debit cards — has made it possible for many Americans to go without carrying cash most of...

Millions of Americans have never switched banks, a recent survey commissioned by DepositAccounts found. Even more profess loyalty to their current financial institution.

This reluctance to switch banks — especially to an online-only bank — could collectively cost the country billions of dollars.

Key findings

• An estimated 96 million Americans have never switched banks, collectively leaving up to $42 billion in interest income on the table each year.
• Of the millions of Americans who have never switched banks, almost 75% say the reason is because they're satisfied...

Certificates of deposit (CDs) have long been a great place to stash your savings, especially for conservative investors who want a guaranteed yield. But who are these conservative savers, and where do they live?

In this study, DepositAccounts looked at the percentage of households owning CDs in the 100 largest metros in the U.S. to gauge where this investing product is most — and least — popular.

Until only a few months ago, 1-year CD yields were reaching as high as 3.00%. But CDs as...

Young people aren’t typically known being financial savvy. Scan various headlines and you’ll read that millennials and Gen Zers are killing industries or otherwise mismanaging their money.

But in a new DepositAccounts survey, we’ve found that today’s college students may be better at saving their money than we thought. Not only are college students saving their money, but many are funding their own tuition payments, living expenses and emergency funds.

Let’s take a deeper dive into the money management habits of today’s college students and...

In dynamic, ever-changing financial markets, interest rates constantly fluctuate. CD rates are no exception. Examining historical CD rates can give us insight into the direction rates may be heading in the future.

The current situation is characterized by declining CD yields, in response to the Federal Reserve’s latest policy pause. The average 6-month CD rate in July 2019 sits at 0.92% APY. What a difference the decades can make: 6-month CD rates had climbed to around 18% in the early 1980s.

The fourth Fed meeting of 2019 is scheduled to start Tuesday. The FOMC statement should be released on 2:00pm Wednesday. The expectation is for the Fed to continue to hold steady on rates. However, odds have been rising that the Fed will cut rates. The CME FedWatch Tool still shows that the highest odds are that the federal funds target rate will remain unchanged (80.8% remaining the same vs. 19.2% cutting by 0.25%). However, the odds of a rate cut rise dramatically for the Fed’s July meeting (only 15.7% odds...

The Federal Reserve has hit the pause button on rates, with further increases off the table for now. After hiking the fed funds rate nine times in the three years between December 2015 and December 2018, the Fed has adopted a “wait-and-see approach” in regards to future rate adjustments.

In their own words, FOMC officials are patiently waiting for more economic data — strong or weak — to signal the need for either more rate hikes or a possible rate decrease.

This news is sweet relief for homebuyers shopping...

Several prominent Democrats — including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand; and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — support the idea of providing basic banking services through U.S. post offices.

There are several reasons why advocates are getting behind this concept, but the main idea is concern for Americans who live and work in so-called “banking deserts,” where access to basic financial services is limited by geography. Supporters believe that mandating the United States Postal Service (USPS) to provide basic financial services would help address the problem of banking deserts.

In 2016 we did a study on CD early withdrawal penalties (EWP). By examining EWP data from more than 1,000 institutions, we extracted average EWPs for CD terms from 6 months to 5 years. This year we looked at the data again to see how EWPs have changed. The review included EWP data from 7,562 CDs that were offered by 1,019 banks and credit unions.

As described in our 2016 overview of CD EWPs, the early withdrawal penalty is simply a penalty that is applied when a CD holder elects to...

When looking around for the best deposit rates, you’ve probably noticed that online banks tend to dominate lists with their competitive interest rates. This is especially true when comparing online bank rates with traditional brick-and-mortar banks.

To get a better sense of this competition, DepositAccounts took a deep dive into local bank rates and found that in many states, the rate is no better than the average rate you could find with an online savings account or 1-year CD. The analysis, which was conducted Jan. 1,...