Best buy easy-access savings rates: Marcus boosts deal to 0.6%

Marcus Bank has boosted the rate on its easy-access savings account firing it back up the best buy charts for the first time since it reopened its doors to customers.

The bank, backed by Goldman Sachs, has boosted both its regular easy-access account and cash Isa from 0.4 to 0.5 per cent.

However, it is offering an additional 12 month fixed-rate bonus of 0.1 per cent on both type of account for new and existing customers, bringing it up to 0.6 per cent.

Existing customers will have the uplift to 0.5 per cent added automatically, but need to log-in to their account to add the extra 0.1 per cent.

Those who already boosted their rate earlier in the year from 0.4 per cent to 0.5 per cent will also now be paid 0.6 per cent interest, in a rare case of a bank rewarding loyalty.  

Marcus launched in September 2018 and was a consistent best buy, even in the early part of the pandemic, offering a leading 1.5 per cent on easy-access accounts seeing it hoover up savers.

It closed its doors in June 2020 because it ran the risk of breaching British banking rules if it hit £25billion in deposits, such was the numbers it managed to attract, which in turn lead to rate cuts for customers who held money with it.

That would have forced it to ring-fence its UK operations and leave it unable to use the money to finance its London-based investment banking unit.

It reopened its doors earlier in the year, but it hasn’t topped the independent This is Money savings tables until today. In fact, it cut rates six times between March 2020 and March 2021.

The bank has Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection up to £85,000 and accounts can be opened online with £1.

Its cash Isa can also be opened with £1 and it is now also a best buy in our savings tables. 

However, a huge snag is the fact it doesn’t accept transfers in, presumably to stop large sums of cash flowing in.

Challenger bank Cynergy also offers an easy-access rate of 0.6 per cent, but this accepts transfers in. It too is online only and can be opened with £1.

Meanwhile, in terms of standard easy-access accounts, Family Building Society has a 0.65 per cent rate which beats Marcus, but it requires a £10,000 opening balance.

Aldermore Bank has a double access account paying 0.6 per cent which requires a £1,000 opening balance.

Easy-access rates are still in the doldrums and no rates currently on offer from a mainstream savings provider with FSCS protection can currently come anywhere close to inflation, which was recorded as 3.2 per cent for August.

It remains to be seen if the move by Marcus can help stimulate some much needed competition.  

Challengers tend to battle more fiercely for fixed-rate savings account cash. 

This week, Gatehouse launched a best buy 1.51 per cent fix for a year while new bank Recognise came out with a market-leading 2 per cent rate late last week.

The average easy-access rate is the lowest on record, according to data from Moneyfacts. 

The typical rate is just 0.17 per cent, down from 0.22 per cent last September and 0.64 per cent in the same month of 2019.

It comes as many of Britain’s big banks continue to offer just 0.01 per cent on these bread and butter accounts.

Meanwhile, the same can be said of easy-access cash Isas which have crashed even further, from an average of 0.93 per cent in September 2019, to 0.32 per cent in September 2020 and 0.24 per cent today.

It’s a different story for fixed-rate accounts, which have nudged slightly higher compared to last month and September 2020.