Canadian High Interest Savings Bank Accounts

They probably won't be the last bank to lower savings rates. ING's savings rate is still sitting at 2.00%, but they recenty dropped their short-term (less than one year) GIC rates to 1.00%. That's right, ONE PERCENT. They also lowered their long-term (more than one year) GIC rates accross the board. Remember that the current BoC target overnight rate is sitting at 0.5%, so all the banks are going to lower their rates sooner or later. They are all probably playing a game of "chicken" right now to see who will lower rates first and have to deal with the massive outflow of cash that usually follows (I guess PC Financial was the first to blink).

1.65% — So much for being a pioneering leader in the High-Interesting Savings Back Account world. Amazing, just 1.65%! Wow, I never thought it would go so low again. Well, at least you pay less money in taxes on the interest you earn as you won't be earning much interest in that account!

I remember someone posting on here saying that under 2% (in fact, even under 4%!) the banks should not call them "High Interest".

In the UK, you can still get a savings account at 4%. http://www.halifax.co.uk/savings/regularsaver.asp and the BoC Current Bank Rate is just .5% too. ( http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/ )

Mike

There are a few banks (wait, almost all banks) are offering better than 1.65%…

You could get an ATB Financial account at 1.75% (just dropped from 1.85%):
http://www.atb.com/Dev/accounts/accounts_springboard.asp if you want 100% security over $100k

You could wait for a "promo deal" from HSBC (2% right now, +1% just ended).

1 Year GIC rates are topped at 3%: http://money.mytelus.com/rates/term/long_1.asp

Definately not a "savers market" out there. You could take your chances at currency exchange.. UK bank Halifax Savings offers a 4.1% rate: http://www.halifax.co.uk/savings/comparealloursavingsaccounts.asp

I do think that interest rates can only go up from 2009, so don't lock in for more than a year or two. Rates need to go up to advert another credit bubble once all this extra Trillions of dollars kicks in.

And the lowest GIC rate is:
TD Canada Trust offers at 1 Year GIC at… 0.200%

Mike

Along with ICICI-Canada bank SBI-Canada (2.8%) also seem to have good interest rates.

http://www.sbicanada.com/personalbanking-interestrates.html

One of the reasons could be these Banks are primarily from other country (India). May be they are investing the money over there so even though economy is bad globaly not as bad as US & Canada they are still able to provide high interest rates?