Cologne German savers are worried about low interest rates and rising inflation. Last year alone, according to the comparison portal Biallo.de, around 300 banks and savings banks introduced a custody fee for credit balances on call money and current accounts. A total of 553 financial institutions in Germany are now charging negative interest rates from their customers.
With this, they want to offset the deposit interest of minus 0.5 percent that the institutions have to pay to the European Central Bank (ECB) if they store their money there overnight. Many savers no longer want to go along with this and are looking for alternatives. In addition to investments in the stock market, overnight and fixed-term accounts, especially with banks in other European countries, are becoming increasingly attractive for savers.
In the past year, FMH-Finanzberatung has regularly compared and rated day and time deposit accounts. In a current ranking, it presents the best daily and fixed deposit accounts from the past year. In it, the FMH experts compared the overnight return over the year with an investment amount of 1,000 euros over an investment period of six months.
At the end of the year, they finally evaluated how often the institutes made it into the top three with their offers. On this basis, the experts awarded points: first place received three points, second place two and third place received one point.
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In addition, a distinction was made between business with new and existing customers. The banks also fell into different categories: banks with statutory deposit protection, banks with extended German deposit protection and banks that reached customers through intermediaries.
The majority of the leaders are in other European countries
The big bank from Estonia took first place with the best overnight money account 2021 in the category of statutory deposit insurance for new and existing customers. Overall, the institute was in first place for 47 weeks last year. The interest rate here is currently 0.3 percent.
The environmental bank took second place with an interest rate of 0.1 percent. Overall, the bank was in second place in the rankings for new customer offers for 27 weeks and for offers for existing customers for 41 weeks.
Third place for new and existing customers is Sberbank Direct, headquartered in Vienna. At this bank, too, the interest rate is currently 0.1 percent.
Akbank, a subsidiary of the Turkish Akbank TAŞ., Took first place in the category of new and existing customers among the institutions with extended German deposit insurance. Your current interest rate is 0.06 percent. In the new customer ranking, the bank took first place for a total of 24 weeks, compared to 23 weeks for existing customers.
The silver medal in both sub-categories goes to Bank11 from Neuss. Their interest rate is 0.05 percent. The institute was in first place for a total of 17 weeks and in third place for 17 weeks. The bank took second place in business with new customers over eleven weeks, and with existing customers it was 13 weeks.
Third place in the new customer business is occupied by Oyak Anker Bank, a subsidiary of the Oyak pension fund of the Turkish armed forces. The current interest rate here is zero percent. Third place among the existing customers goes to Ford Bank GmbH with an interest rate of 0.05 percent. Ford Bank was in the top three a total of 35 times in 2021.
There are no EU directives
There is a crucial difference between the statutory and the extended German deposit protection: The German Banks Compensation Scheme (EdB) of the extended deposit protection goes beyond the legally prescribed 100,000 euros per person. In addition, the deposit protection fund of the Federal Association of German Banks protects balances amounting to 15 percent (from 2025: 8.75 percent) of the liable equity of the respective member bank.
Although there is a consensus across the EU on deposit insurance for assets of up to 100,000 euros, there has so far been no legally uniform and defined guideline for banks within the European Union.
However, FMH financial expert Max Herbst believes that the risk that investors who park their money at the big bank in Estonia, for example, will lose their assets in the worst case scenario is low. “In my opinion, in an emergency, the EU would not watch a bank go bankrupt and risk that savers would lose confidence in the banks,” says Herbst.
The top three of the institutes that reach their customers through intermediaries were able to achieve the best results with both new and existing customers. All are headquartered in Scandinavia.
The Swedish Klarna Bank took first place with an interest rate of 0.16 percent. In second place is Avida Finans, also from Sweden, with currently 0.15 percent interest. Third place goes to Instabank from Norway, where the interest rate is also currently 0.15 percent.
“The Scandinavian banks are popular with customers because of their attractive offers,” says Matthias Klaubert, VP Deposits & Operations at Raisin DS, the operator of the WeltSparen and Zinspilot websites. The institutions have a high need for customer funds with which they finance their lending business. “One of the reasons for this is that they have little or no branch network and therefore no access to retail business,” explains the financial expert.
So it is with the fixed deposit
The top three of the best time deposit accounts differ significantly within the subcategories. In 2021, the FMH evaluated the offers from a total of 94 banks with an investment amount of 10,000 euros and an investment period of twelve months. In the “statutory deposit insurance” category, the big bank was most frequently in the top three with an interest rate of 0.5 percent and took first place. Sberbank, with an interest rate of 0.3 percent, ranks second. The third most frequently made it into the top three was the French Crédit Agricole. The current interest rate here is 0.07 percent.
Bank11 (0.25 percent interest), Cronbank (0.25 percent) and abcbank (0.05 percent) were the banks that made it into the top three most frequently in the category with extended German deposit insurance in 2021. In the case of banks through intermediaries, it was the Greek Attica Bank (0.65 percent), the Haitong Bank (0.68 percent) and the Investbank (0.30 percent).
Fixed-term deposit accounts with a term of one year were particularly popular with WeltSparen customers last year. “Whether a daily or fixed deposit account is best depends on the customer’s needs,” says Matthias Klaubert. In the first pandemic year of 2020 in particular, the demand for overnight money accounts rose sharply.
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