Santander Consumer Bank recently launched a new saving account, with an increased interest rate, but requires to lock up funds for 6 or 12 months. We said “new” since this isn’t just an offer for Santander Saving Account (as it is, for example ING’s “Conto Arancio+“, that is accessible only for Conto Arancio‘s owners), but is a completely separated account, and also Santander’s Saving Account owners need to open a new Time Deposit account, if interested to it.
One thing has to be highligted: Time Deposit isn’t completely free, since taxes are at customer expenses, and not at bank’s (as it is in the saving account). In return, there aren’t minimum limits for deposits (as, instead, happens in Conto Arancio+), but taxes at customer expenses make Time Deposit not advantageous under 5-10,000 Euro.
Interest rates depend on the “lockup time”:
- 6 months: interest rate is 4,25% (3,1025% net)
- 12 months: interest rate is 4,50% (3,285% net)
Interests are credited on the account at due date (no quarterly capitalization), and taxation is the same as saving and bank account (it is not considered as a financial investment, that in Italy are subject to lower withholding taxes).
It is quite interesting that it is possible to withdraw the money before maturity (but all the deposit, you can’t withdraw just part of it), and the sum is remunerated at a 3% annual interest rate, for the period of the deposit.
Finally, my opinion: sincerely, Santander’s Time Deposit doesn’t attract me that much. It isn’t “bad”, but simply it doesn’t offer an interest rate that higher to justify locking up your capital. Even more if you consider there are in Italy offers like IWBank’s IWPower of Fineco’s Supersave, that allow you to have similar yelds but only locking your money for a few months, instead of an year.
Original post (in Italian): Santander Time Deposit
Banche e Risparmio [http://www.banknoise.com]