Could a savings platform help boost your rate and beat the banks? Our new tables show how to bag a best buy with a bonus
It’s no secret that rates on offer to savers are low, especially when you compare it to the current rate of inflation.
Much of Britain’s collective savings kitty is sat inside poor paying easy-access deals, potentially dishing out as little as 0.01 per cent interest, with the pandemic exacerbating low rates.
For more than a decade, This is Money has had a no-nonsense set of independent savings tables which rank, in order, the top rates daily, separated into categories such as easy-access, fixed-rates and Isas.
They are all covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme limit and usually require very few hoops to jump through to get the rate, making them open for all.
While we would love to bring news of inflation-busting rates and no-risk accounts to our readers, we’ve had to settle for something else – the first new savings table to add to our collection for a very long-time.
Turbo charged: If you have £10,000 in savings and need to stash it outside of Isas or investing, a savings platform could boost your rate
The tables are the best rates on offer from a new wave of savings platforms that allow you to manage money in one place, often with bonus boosters.
What we mean by this is that many offer sign-up bonuses boosting the rate in year one – at the moment, the tables feature Raisin and AvivaSave, both of which are offering £50 to open an account, with a minimum opening balance of £10,000.
That will count some savers out, but for others, who have five figures or more to save, a platform like this can help get you a better rate and make it easier to move around to keep getting a top deal, and spread your money around without having to fill in paperwork for all different providers.
In terms of rates, if you save £10,000 with Raisin, you can unlock a 1.11 per cent rate on easy-access versus 0.75 per cent without.
Meanwhile, the top one year deal can be boosted to 2.05 per cent, opposed to 1.38 per cent. A 32 day notice account paying 1.3 per cent is another top pick.
Yes, they don’t beat inflation but they are still the best of a bad bunch, offer FSCS protection and crucially mean you can beat the banks, who for years have offered little in the way of savings competition.
We will keep these top deals updated along with our other savings tables, which are looked at by millions of readers every year.
The tables will tell you if they beat the equivalent best buy in our regular tables.
It’s worth noting that the sign-up bonuses are for new customers only and outside of these opening deals, the rates on offer typically aren’t as good as the ones in our regular tables.
But, if you can take advantage in the first year with the bonus and then find it easy to manage your cash on a platform, rather than having to move the money around yourself, if could be a no-brainer.
All money is held under the FSCS to the tune of £85,000 per savings provider – not per platform.
To read more about savings platforms, reporter Ed Magnus wrote this in the summer: Should you sign up to a savings platform? We look at how the main players compare to the best rates on offer
(Please note that the rates in that article were correct on 20 August 2021, not today, but gives an overview of how they work).
How to find the best savings rates
Savings rates have been in the doldrums for many years but the situation was hugely exacerbated by the pandemic and the emergency base rate cut to 0.1 per cent.
But there are ways to ensure your cash is at least in the best of the bunch at all times.
Checking top rates is essential, but it is also possible to make life easier overall and manage your savings pots in one place.
Over the past few years a number of savings platforms have launched, offering savers the option to switch as and when better deals become available and manage accounts from different banks and building societies.
They each work slightly differently and include their own exclusives. To check out what’s on offer take a look yourself:
> Raisin
> Hargreaves Lansdown Active Savings
> Flagstone
Or you can view This is Money’s comprehensive best buy savings tables here, independently curated by savings guru Sylvia Morris:
> Compare best savings rates now
