🔔 💬 Anna's two pence worth (#22): Beat the high street banks and boost your interest

Anna Bowes is a regular contributor to the BBC’s Money Box, Breakfast and News programs, as well as the national press, providing expert analysis and commentary on the UK savings market. Anna has worked in the financial services industry for more than 20 years and for most of that time has been helping people to make the most of their savings.

If you’ve been reading our weekly newsletters, then the introduction of the new Cash Savings Platforms won’t have gone unnoticed.

This market continues to grow in popularity and to expand, which is great news for savers, as we believe these could be the key to help fight inertia - to hit back at the old-school banks who pay derisory rates to savers, especially to their long-standing, loyal customers.

However, each Cash Savings Platform provider is slightly different in its approach and although they all follow the same basic rule - offering a simple way to open and switch multiple savings accounts - it can be hard to decide which one is most suitable to your savings needs.

So, we’re pleased to bring you our new Cash Savings Platform comparison tables. Listing each of the most popular platforms; what they offer, who they’re available to and therefore highlighting which one might be best suited to you.

As one of the only places where you can find this information in one place, we really hope you find it useful. Of course, all feedback and suggestions are always welcome - so let us know what you think.

This week there’s been a new addition to the growing list of Cash Savings Platform providers, Dynamic Cash Management express (DCMe) – once again, a platform with a bit of a difference.

🔖 Read: Dynamic Cash Management express - Platform Provider Focus for details about whether this could be the solution to your savings needs.

Manchester Building Society’s financial problems have been back in the news this week, as the provider has lost its appeal to win a larger settlement from its former auditor, Grant Thornton. As a result, if you hold money with Manchester Building Society, and in particular if you own any Permanent Interest Bearing Shares (PIBS) with them, it might be worth reading our article.

🔖 Read: Manchester Building Society’s woes continue

It’s been six months since the rise in the Bank of England base rate and many providers still haven’t increased the rates on their variable rate accounts.

In fact, as our latest research highlights, some providers have even cut rates. In our article, we show you where to move your money to improve your interest.

🔖 Read: Research shows that savings providers are still cutting rates

In our regular feature, the Rates Rundown, we look at what has been happening to rates this week across the board – spoiler alert – not a lot!

In fact, it seems that fixed rate accounts have slightly come off the boil this week. Although there are still some competitive rates to be found, some of the top rates seem to be closing to new business pretty quickly.

So, if you’re thinking of locking into a fixed rate, you might want to consider if holding out might mean missing out.

🔖 Read: Best buy fixed rate battle takes a breather

Finally, thank you to those who took part in our first ever reader’s poll last week. As you are part of the more engaged, switched on, savings community, I guess it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to find that 74% of you have, or plan to use, your cash ISA allowance in the current tax year - which means you haven’t lost complete faith in them just yet.

It could be argued that cash ISAs offer better value for wealthier savers only these days, as they are particularly important for anyone already exceeding their Personal Savings Allowance (PSA).

But of course, if interest rates continue to rise - which we very much hope they will - more and more savers will find themselves in this situation. So, we are sure that cash ISAs will maintain their position as a valuable  part of many savers’ portfolios.

📧 Email us on [email protected]

💬 Comment below via Discus

📱 Send us a message on Facebook or Twitter

☎️ Or call us on 0800 011 9705

*We are occasionally paid by some providers if you click through from our Best Buy Tables and open a savings or current account with them. We will never accept a payment that compromises in any way our independent, whole of market approach to providing information on savings products. For clarity we will indicate those companies who remunerate us with an asterisk (*).

Articles featured in this edition