Savings Accounts With Ongoing Bonus Interest

Making the most of your savings is a lot easier when you have an account with a good interest rate.

While traditional savings accounts and term deposits have always offered some stability with the interest rates available, online savings accounts have started to lure customers in with competitive bonus interest rates.

These kinds of accounts, like the ANZ Online Saver, Citibank Online Saver and Virgin Saver, provide bonus variable rates as high as 6% p.a. for the first few months after an account is opened. The rate then reverts to an ongoing variable percentage that could be up to 2% lower.

While most of accounts offering signup bonus interest will still be considered high interest savings options once the rate has reverted to it’s standard offering, there are some accounts that go one step further by offering ongoing bonus interest options.

The idea behind bonus interest is that it can be used as an incentive for customers. In the case of accounts offering higher introductory rates, the incentive is for them to open up an account but with ongoing bonus interest accounts, people are rewarded for regular savings.

A good example of an account that provides ongoing bonuses is the UBank USaver, which offers an ongoing variable interest rate of 5.61% and a bonus 0.5% if $200 or more is deposited in a month. That adds up to 6.11%, making this account one of the highest interest options available.

But UBank’s USaver is not the only account available that offers bonus interest, with other popular options including:

1. The ANZ Progress Saver – featuring a standard rate of 0.01% and a total bonus rate of 4.51%.
2. The Commonwealth Bank Award Saver – with a 0.01% standard rate and total bonus rate of 5.76%.
3. The Westpac Reward Saver – offering a total bonus rate of 5.95% and a standard rate of 1%; and
4. The Bankwest Regular Saver – with no standard interest rate but a bonus 6% if $50-$500 is deposited every month and no withdrawals are made.

These accounts all stick to similar guidelines – as long as you make regular deposits without any withdrawals you will get a higher rate of interest.

This kind of interest works as an incentive for people to regularly put money into their savings, while bonus introductory interest only provides a benefit for the first few months money is in there.

It is easy to get caught up in just looking at the highest rate available for any savings account but looking at the terms and conditions that apply will help you find the best place to keep your savings and reap the rewards both now and in the future.