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Banking and Cards Research
Digging into the Customer Experience: Banking and Credit Cards
Corporate Insight’s Bank Monitor, Credit Card Monitor and Small Business Card Monitor provide ongoing coverage of the products, websites and overall customer experience offered by the nation’s leading banks and card issuers. Our value-added banking and credit card research digs deeply to evaluate the retail and small business customer experience.
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With interest rates for traditional savings accounts near all-time lows, Certificates of Deposit can seem like a good option for users looking to earn more with their deposited money. In this report, we investigate the various CD options currently available from Bank Monitor firms, along with how they are marketed on banks’ public sites. Our look at this product-type takes looks at the APYs, term-lengths and other attributes available from firms’ CD products. Certificates of Deposit can be a good option for clients looking to earn more from their deposited funds, especially in an atmosphere where APYs for regular savings accounts are extremely low. The variety of rates and types of CDs available in the marketplace can be daunting, with many firms offering limited-time Special CDs and some offering well-known but rare options, such as Callable CDs and Opt-Up CDs. In this edition of Bank Monitor Report, we look at the various CD options currently marketed online, examining the term-lengths, APYs and attributes they offer. As we researched the different product options offered by each bank, we concentrated on the following Key Issues:
In total, 15 of the 16 firms we track include information about Certificate of Deposit options on their public site, with all but three allowing prospects to open new accounts online. Despite this, just less than half of the firms that promote CDs do so within dedicated product pages. Instead, many firms couple their CD products in with other Savings accounts, diluting the amount of information available and the visibility of their CD products. Regardless of how a firm promotes CDs, the most common CD-type currently available are traditional term CDs, which 87% of banks are offering. Interestingly, very few firms are offering tiered APYs, with only three banks providing prospects with differentiated earnings rates based on the amount they deposit into their CD. Despite the promise of higher returns for CDs in comparison to Savings accounts, APYs are still low, with almost every firm offering a rate of less than 1% on a standard CD with a 12-month term. Despite the prevalence of traditional CDs, few firms are offering innovative non-traditional CDs. In total, only four banks are currently promoting CDs with interesting attributes, with two firms offering a Liquid CD, two offering an Opt-Up CD, and only one offering Step Rate CDs. Similarly, very few firms are offering any sort of relationship bonus to existing clients or those prospects that open additional firm accounts at the same time they open a CD. Even at those firms that do offer increased rates for those with multiple accounts, the bonus is typically only 0.05%. As we continued to investigate the currently available CDs at each bank, we came across the following additional Key Findings:
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