The rate wars continue! EmigrantDirect announced today that they raised their interest rates to 4.25% APY, matching HSBC Direct. For those with accounts, check out my Rate Chaser Calculator if you are at a lower rate right now and are thinking of transferring money. For those without, check out my $10-$20 EmigrantDirect Signup Bonus.
Emigrant Direct Raises Rate to 4.25% APY
January 26, 2006 By 17 Comments
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I kept my money at ED, seems to be a wise choice now. It will take at least 68 days for me to compensate the interest lost. Thanks to ED to increase its rate so soon. I guess the other banks might do something more later, but before Apr.15.
Outstanding!!! Every little bit helps. Thanks for the heads up!
Hazzard
I’m glad they did this because they sort of stuck themselves in the middle as a non-choice IMO because folks chasing the highest rate would tend toward HSBC and folks looking for good interface and low barrier to entry might go for ING (that was my thinking anyway)
I doubt this will help win them (ED) any new customers though, because their sign-up process still takes 300 years and ING is offering its temporary higher rate on deposits.
I am happy that ED raised the rates. I have my money in ED and I was contemplating opening an HSBC for the higher rates but was mulling on two many transfers and potential interest loss. And now I do not need to do anything to get the higher rates.
300 years is right. i’ve been waiting over 3 weeks now to get online access to my account. the arte will probably change again before i manage to get any money in there 😉
and by “arte”, of course i mean “rate”
This is to0 little way too late. Thier Credit Card offer is a joke. Requires you maintain $10K to earn 1.25% while Fidelity Visa earns you 1.5% with no min balance requirement. Keydirect.com now pays 4.55% but requires a min balance of $25K. HSBC is the rate leader of 0 balance accounts for a while now but GMAC has been 4.30% and only requires $500 balance. I am willing to bet many banks will increase rates next week to well over 4.25% after fed raise Fed Funds rate to 4.50% on Tuesday.
There are 9 banks paying a higher interest rate than HSBC and ED on Bankrate.com.
Erica, I would STRONGLY recommend you to give ED a call ASAP! I waited for two weeks before I gave them a call. I was told that apparently nothing was being done regarding my ED account. At first, the CSR told me that I should wait another week or so before calling them again. However, she changed her mind and ended up telling me half of my account number over the phone and emailed me the other half.
I don’t have to worry to much about interest lost, when I push money to ED, because I have a checking account that gave me 4.03 APY.
I opened an ED account today and got it within 48 hours. I opened it with $0 and that cut down on the wait time – no letter to wait for.
The CSR gave me half of the account number over the phone and the other half was emailed to me. It’s all done.
I also noticed the 4.25% today – very happy about it.
Ingrid 🙂
Eh?! What the..
Anyway, good for you! 😉
Yeah – noticed the rate change this morning. Perfect timing, I had a transfer scheduled for Monday to finish clearing out Emigrant into HSBC. Cancelled that. 🙂
All in all, I think this is ideal – now we can keep half our cash in hsbc with their slow transfers, and half in emigrant, with their crazy “we can keep all your money” T&C. 🙂
Then again, by Tuesday we might all be making more..
Denon: What do you mean by “we can keep all your money?”
I am waiting to transfer all my cash until after the first of the month. It’s too late for me to make a change for this month. By the time the transfer clears, I will not get the current interest on my etrade account because I moved it out before the end of the month and I would also not get the interest for the ED account because it would not have posted that quickly – too risky.
—
yeah, the way around the ED waiting issue is to open the account with $0. They let you do that “no minimum required.” I will not get a letter, and my account is all up and running.
🙂
Yes there are (and likely always will be) banks paying higher interest rates than this. However, none of them have no minimum balance requirements and no monthly fees. If you’re keeping your money at a bank with a $25,000 minimum and their rates start dropping off, you would have to totally close that account to avoid fees. Then, if they raise rates again, you’d have to re-open that account all over again. Even I think that’s too much trouble.
Nimbette2 – If you open with $0, is your account linked with anything? Can you just make a deposit today instead from an external account, for instance?
Jonathan:
Yeah, I opened it using my main checking account, but set the amount of my initial transfer to $0.
The ED account is linked with my checking account. ED deposited two small amounts to my main checking account to make sure the accounts were linked, but the entire setup took 48 hours. I thought it was pretty fast. I just won’t get the welcome packet and letter, but that doesn’t matter.
I did it to see if it’s truly “no minimum.” Now, I am waiting to move money in until I get interest from my current etrade money market, since it’s too close to the end of the month and I might get caught in limbo with no interest at all.
🙂
Perfect timing. Murphy’s law is amazing. Just moved almost all of my money out of ED the day before the rate change. But it doesn’t matter since the move was to ING. Have ED as a pull from within ING so only one day’s intereset lost with 8 days to recover the one day’s lost interest. Thanks for the calculater Jonathan it made an easy decision even easier. May I suggest you make it one of your ‘Popular Posts’.