Savings Accounts

As pop legends Madonna and Michael Jackson reach their 50th birthday, they now join the 50+ generation, forming one of the most important segments of society collectively holding 91 per cent of savings and current account assets, 43 per cent of ISA assets and 33 per cent of shares.

Families planning ahead for next year's holiday could get a boost from Skipton Building Society. Skipton is offering £25 of free travel money to customers who open a Special Saver Account during September and save over £150 per month.

Scarborough Building Society is now offering customers even better value on their savings by raising the interest rate on its Direct Extra account to 6.46% (variable) for the first year.

Leeds Building Society is set to launch a branch based 2-year Escalator Tracker, on Tuesday 26th August, paying an escalating return up to 1.75% above the Bank of England Base rate in the second year (currently 6.75%).

Banks and building societies are cutting interest rates on instant access savings accounts despite being desperate to attract more cash from savers, says MoneyExpert.com.

Abbey Savings has announced that the Premiership's ‘Super Saver' in the 2007-8 season was Manchester City's Joe Hart. Research conducted by Abbey has found that the former Shrewsbury trainee was the best value for money goalkeeper in the league, costing his club a meagre £3,644 per save made from his 6ft 3in frame.

A number of football league clubs will run out onto the pitch to start the new season this year thanks to the financial support of their loyal fans via affinity savings accounts, says Andrew Hagger of personal finance comparison site Moneynet.co.uk.

Britannia Building Society has launched a brand new online and telephone savings account - DirectSaver Reserve with a rate of 6.25% gross.

Commenting on Kaupthing Edge raising the rate on its easy access savings account to a market-leading 6.55 per cent, Kevin Mountford, head of savings at moneysupermarket.com, said: "Once again, we see a foreign bank flexing its muscles in the savings arena.

Norwich and Peterborough Building Society (N&P) is launching two new savings accounts with ‘best-buy' rates - and there's a choice for customers depending on whether they'd prefer to run their savings by post, or online.

In the first partnership of its kind, Scottish Widows Bank and Scottish Rugby have launched a savings account which when opened, can directly support the growth of grass-roots rugby across Scotland.

Regular savings accounts are booming in the credit crunch with average interest rates climbing to 5.25 per cent compared with 4.23 per cent in January 2007 when the base rate was 0.25 per cent higher than now, analysis by MoneyExpert.com shows.

M&S Money is launching new, higher rates on 1, 2 and 3 year Fixed Rate Savings products with effect from 3rd July 2008, offering guaranteed rates up to 6.01% AER/gross.

Sainsbury's Finance says that many of the best buy savings accounts are applying conditions on how they can be used, including limiting access to deposits. Its analysis of the top 50 instant/easy access savings accounts on balances of £1,000 reveals that 26 have one or more of these conditions.

From next week, savers can continue to benefit from a market-leading rate of 9.1 per cent, as Abbey extends its Super Saver offer. The Super Saver is a limited edition 12-month fixed-rate account offering 9.1 per cent if customers put an equal amount or more into any Abbey investment product.