Banks and building societies will soon be providing savers with annual statements with interest rates printed on in regards to their savings accounts.
Leading financial service providers have agreed to list the actual rate banking customers earn on their savings products, with several personal and business bank account providers already agreeing to begin the practice from next year. Of the big High Street names, only RBS, NatWest, the Co-Operative, Britannia, and Santander have not yet agreed to participate in the new programme.
Savers with more than one product from the same provider will have each interest rate listed on their statements highlighted and easily readable. This differs from previously, where providers would send long lists of rates to their customers which made it hard for customers to locate their rates.
Industry experts have been urging the banking industry for the past 12 months to make it easier for customers to locate their rates. Savers have been watching their payouts plummet because their interest rates would fluctuate wildly and they were unable to know of the changes.
Over the past year, financial services providers have paid out more than £16 billion in interest, not even half of the amount that savers were earning three years ago at £35 billion.
Rates spiraled down once the credit crisis struck, with the Office of Fair Trading growing so concerned that it made demands of the banking industry to add customers’ interest rates to their annual statements. However, this demand only applied to cash ISA products, though soon industry experts began to call for interest rates to be printed on the statements of other kinds of savings products as well.
Many banks and building societies have since fallen into line, choosing to voluntarily institute the changes over the next few weeks.