High Street bank Barclays recently announced its intention to introduce a new savings product starting this month, good news for consumers looking to expand their current portfolio.
The finance provider will be offering new fixed-rate bonds packages to its customers, both new and existing, with a term of two years. The bank has said that these new bonds will carry rates of up to 3.55 per cent on selected balances, which represents a rise of 0.55 per cent on the previous packages Barclays has offered for the same period of time in the past.
This new increase to the annual gross interest rate is particularly noteworthy for any savers who have plans to deposit a significant amount of their cash savings into bonds, as the balances the bonds are paying on range from £50,000 at a minimum, topping out at £1 million.
Additionally, any balances which total under the £50,000 mark will still earn a 3 per cent rate, provided the account carries at least a £500 balance.
Barclays’ head of savings Andy Gray released a comment in conjunction with the news of the bank’s new two year fixed-rate products, stating that such bonds have proven to be quite popular with their customers from 2008 through the present year.
Since fixed-rate bonds offer some of the most attractive interest rates currently available in the savings market, many savers have found them highly valuable in light of the currently over-target economic inflation for the UK, which has been holding stubbornly high at around 3.1 per cent.
In related news, Credit Action spokesman Richard Talbot remarked in a recent statement that savers should be shifting the focus of their hard-earned cash into such products as fixed-rate bonds in the days following the recession.