RAMS Saver account
High Interest Savings Account
RAMS Saver is an online savings account that pays a high rate of return, with interest calculated daily and paid monthly.
Earn a high bonus variable interest rate of 5.75% p.a.* on balances up to $500,000 (that's the base rate of 4.95% p.a. plus 0.8% p.a. bonus) when:
you deposit a minimum of $200 per month
you make no withdrawals in the month
your account balance does not drop below $0
your account is open for the entire month
Are you a Kiwi?
does sheep eat you pigeon?
are these rates post interest rate drop?
edit: oh, "you make no withdrawals in the month". that sucks
Yeah really crappy clause there, I can understand if they said bonus interest applied to the lowest balance in the month.
Pretty much a term deposit that you can add money to but the rate isnt guaranteed (You cant take out)
Ahhhh I don't think 'no withdrawals in the month' is that big a problem - for if you're using it as a pure max interest spot to stash your surplus funds you'd not expect to withdraw funds the vast majority of months.
Obviously this rules it out as a savings account but thats really not the intention of it.
I've got a couple of accounts with Ubank who's interest rates max out at 5.51% at present….having read over the terms and conditions I see them as pretty even on everything else.
As far as feeling confident in them they're part of Westpac (from what I can gather) so fully underwritten by the Aust Govt guarantee on savings deposits.
Seriously leaning towards moving my 2 Ubank accounts away and into this. No fees and higher $ limit and seems to have everything Ubank does. Can't see the downside.
Plus doesn't appear to be a intro rate (as with the 5.7% for 4mths only that Citibank does).
Nice spot….anyone see any probs with this product?
Wespac bought part of the business. Not sure what part this is, but the govt deposit guarantee should cover all deposit taking institutions.
Add. OK the FAQ says the accounts are issued by Westpac.
The government guarantee ended a while ago.
The old one ended, replaced by the new scheme which covers 250K.
Thanks, Had no clue they reinstated the deposit gurantee at a lower rate. Do you know if the new one has a finish date. couldnt seem to find one.
The FCS FAQ PDF says it's permanent, there is no expiry. Australia used to be against deposit insurance but I guess the GFC has changed everything.
I just called Ubank and they refused to match/beat this rate - the staff member consulted with his supervisor and said they'd can't do it. Said Westpac are being very aggressive and they aren't going to beat this rate.
They've lost my business. Good product but WBC have clearly set this product up to take business away from Ubank(NAB) as it's identical in a lot of ways.
Looks a no brainer for me to take advantage of…I've checked rate city and a few others and this is the best deal around by quite a way…only the Citibank Online Saver intro deal ([email protected] is close).
thing that i hate is these banks can give a measly less than 6% interest to me for my money, but,
if i want to borrow their money they will charge 19% interest to them.
it should be more even.
my money i leave in their bank should get minimum 10% interest.
19%? You mean a credit card?
yeah
What's the odds that they won't be able to repay your money on time?
What's the odds that you won't be able to repay their money on time?
There's your answer.
If a home loan rate is lower than this 5.75% rate, am I correct in saying that it's better off to use a savings account like this rather than an offset account against the home loan, providing you put the interest earned into the home loan?
Going to do no withdrawals in a month from your 'savings' account? If so, yes but most people would find this very hard and thus it'd be a no as essentially it'd be a 4.95% rate.
FWIW just called the RAMS info service this deal starts today…..sounded all above board, I'm signing up. Bye bye Ubank - very poor IMHO that they couldn't extend to keep my business but c'est la vie.
you might stash some money which you feel confident you are not going to spend in the next month in a rams saving account but ubank is still a better high interest account for cases where you need to spend some.
in any case, why didn't you take out a term deposit a couple of weeks ago when the interest rates dropped and you could be getting 6%??
and if it was only launched today, ubank might up their interest rates in due course to match it (who knows)
and once you open the rams account you need to wait until the start of the next month before depositing so that you meet the "your account is open for the entire month" condition and get the bonus interest
As far as I understand it, you're not correct. The interest you earn will be taxed at your marginal tax rate which, assuming it's above 0, will reduce the effective interest rate to less than that of your home loan.
+1
If you have a home loan then using it to offset or reduce the interest on the loan is a greater 'return' than leaving it in a savings account..
savings interest = taxed
interest offset from home loan = not taxed
If a home loan rate is lower than this 5.75% rate, am I correct in saying that it's better off to use a savings account like this rather than an offset account against the home loan, providing you put the interest earned into the home loan?
If you can get a home loan at a rate of 5.75% please share with us
providing you put the interest earned into the home loan?
You wouldn't do that though. You'd leave the interest in the savings account to compound.
U-Bank is better value than this.
What a generalisation!
If you have lets say $1-500k and no withdrawals in a month expected how would Ubank be superior than this?
Ubank is ONLY superior if you expect to do a withdrawal in the month - there's no other advantage (unless we talk ticky tack stuff like prefering one website etc). This one has higher max interest rate (5.75 vs 5.51 and higher overall $ limit in account, 500k vs 200k).
If you're going to say Ubank is better value please back it up with some specific facts. :-)
I would also like some facts to back up this claim. I'm currently with UBank as my online saver (NAB for my transaction account) and can't see how this is not superior, aside from the effort in setting up a new account and moving over.
FWIW I just set a RAMS account up - I thought Ubank's process was pretty good but this was even quicker (to be fair that was 2yrs ago) took under 5mins.
Logging in now, you can deposit funds immedaitely but need the account verified before you can withdraw.
Thats fine for me as I just want to wait till end of month to collect the interest from Ubank and then swing over into RAMS….thus being open for the whole month and allowing me to get the bonus rate from them too for JUN.
I'm impressed with it so far.
Oh I gave the RAMS girl a bit of a grilling - she confirmed that they're 100% owned by WBC. SO between that and the Federal Govt guarantee its every bit as secure as Ubank.
Negged because they employ children in their call centres.
I guess every dollar counts in these dark days, when we can barely afford an overseas holiday twice a year, but the difference between RAMS and UBank on $20,000 is less than $50 per annum- check my maths, professor.
And Ubank doesn't have withdrawal restrictions.
$50 is a lot of money for an ozbargainer!
yep same-have cut back…only going O/S every quarter now…its hell :)
the way i see it, this is good for those who can save $200+ every month and not touch it, Ubank allows you to deposit the bonus money and take it out next day ready to be re used again!
the saving comes to $260 p.a with $100,000
*$240?
neither Ubank or RAMS allow pay out via Bpay. however for SMSFs RAMS has no provision at the moment.
I just talked to RAMS over the phone. They said that you are not allowed to withdraw from RAMS Saver account more than $5000 per day. The only get around is to set up some kind of a recurrent payment plan which doesn't make sense if you want to get a bonus rate. Until they change this policy this account doesn't make sense for people who intend to save larger amounts with them.
Can I apply for a higher daily transfer limit?
The default 'Pay Anyone' daily limit is $5,000 per customer per business day and cannot be changed. Should you need to transfer more than $5,000 you can call RAMS on 13 RAMS, that’s 13 7267, provided the payee is already in your “pay anyone” list.
FAQ does specify as you stated.
The person I talked to over the phone told me that I couldn't transfer more than 5,0000 - even over the phone. He said the only exception is if I created a recurring payment plan - something that doesn't make sense if you are after a bonus rate.
I do hope that I just talked to someone who didn't know what he was talking about - I didn't get his name, he was a supervisor working on Saturday.
"provided the payee is already in your “pay anyone” list" - perhaps we need to find out what that entails.
in the worst case you could just close the account to withdraw all your money i suppose. but i agree, it could cause a problem if you had lots of money in the account.
I have confirmed with RAMS that you can do a regular transfer (make sure you leave "save payee" option as checked) to another bank account - that should create a payee in your list and allow you to do larger transfers over the phone in the future.
However, they actually didn't know that you could do that - I think their people have not been made aware of this and that is why they are talking about recurring payment plan.
i did a test run of transfers in & out with $1 over the past 2 days.
the transfer in on 28 may went ok.
the transfer out which i did at 6am yesterday is not in my ubank account today.
not very encouraging with tardy transfer times like that.
i will do one more test today/tomorrow with a couple of different accounts to double check.
i repeated the test yesterday and same results for 4 different banks - seems to be min 2 days transfer out.
so you lose one day's interest transferring money out. therefore it takes 5.51/(5.75-5.51) = ~23 days just to break even. definitely a waste of time for deposits for just one month
How is the RAMS interface like?
much better than Westpac (ironically)
Not worth it with the lost days of interest, guess who swallows it up - RAMS.
I don't trust sheep