The American median household has a combined balance of $ 10,000 in its checks and savings, according to an estimate of the census. In recent years, anyone keeping this amount in a high -performance savings account has gained almost 4% annual interest, or about $ 400 per year.
But the average interest rate of the savings account is closer to 0.4%. And the three largest banks in the country – Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo – offer 0.01% on their standard savings accounts. This is equivalent to $ 1 in interest per year for a deposit of $ 10,000.
Banks compensate for these dark prices with advantages such as many automatic tickets and distributors of tickets, but they also know that many of their customers do not hunt better inertia offers.
Now, the financial protection office of consumers says that a bank, Capital One, has gone too far by intentionally creating confusion so that customers do not know how to move to a more paid account in the same bank. Here is the difference in what they would have gained in interest:
The Consumer Bureau continued Capital One in mid-January, arguing that the bank had misleaded customers by creating a new high-performance account called 360 performance savings, while leaving an existing account, 360 savings, languish to An interest rate below. The bank had previously announced this account as having “one of the highest savings rates in the country”.
The agency estimated that Capital One has avoided paying $ 2 billion by automatically converting each 360 savings account into a 360 savings account.
