Received an email:
Good news – our Everyday Bonus Rate is going up.
From 12 May 2026, you can earn up to 5.10% p.a. bonus interest on your total savings up to $1 million.
To earn your bonus interest, grow your combined savings balance by at least $1 by the end of the month*.
Referee: $30
Referrer: $30 after referee makes 5 settled card purchases within 30 days.
I'm always referring to this table. Though it won't reflect interest hikes coming up in the upcoming days before a few weeks IMO. But whoever is maintaining this table is a legend.
Be great if someone did this for accounts over 1ml and up to say, 10mil
Why??
Folks with $1-10m in cash have the money to pay for management services to do this for them? It beggars belief to imagine they don’t..
It's the management services wanting to use this.
If you had a million in cash, I doubt you'd be paying management services to look after it
@serpserpserp: Sure. It doesn’t cost anything to store a million in cash under the mattress. Or anywhere really if you’re OK with it not earning anything.
But if you want to keep $1-$10m and have it working then you’re absolutely paying someone to manage it for you unless your role/qualifications are in finance/management..
Keeping in mind putting that amount into a normal bank account means it isn’t covered by FIDS..
🤷🏾
$1 is so trivial, why even have it? :)
Macquarie is 5% with no hoops, no bankers playing games to stooge you out of your interest if you forget.
If your bank has conditions on paying interest they aren't trustworthy.
Yes but that's almost like a bond at this point since you can't touch that 100K at all to get that bonus rate. Macquarie is much better with no hoops and full liquidity
You certainly can, but you have to replace withdrawals before the eom.
As has been said on pretty much every one of the interest deals, there's a simple solution.
@Igaf: You'd be silly if this is the only HISA account you have, spread it all around, ING, ubank, Macquarie…. keep the money you need to withdraw in Macquarie and the ones you don't need to touch on the other two so your balance would not reduce.
@cmoddoo: That's the simple solution. The problem for many is not the $1 growth, but the fact that your target next month is balance + monthly interest + $1 - or very roughly $401 every month on a starting $100K balance.
If you don't want your savings balance to be too high at the eom you can always park some of it in your highest interest account for say 28 days then move it out before the last day of the month. That way you receive higher daily interest but not have a much larger target balance for the next month. Alternatively, if you have just one account - say Ubank - move some out of your savings account into your spend account on the last day of the month. You will obviously lose 1 day's interest on that amount.
If savings growth or moving money around is too much then by all means people should look for a Macquarie type savings/transaction account. It makes life much simpler.
full liquidity
How liquid is it, when the Australian government "guarantees" the 'safety net for deposits of up to $250,000 per account holder' ?
@whyisave: Liquidity refers to unrestricted, "immediate" access to your funds - unlike say a term deposit. By full liquidity @nottoobright was probably referring to the fact that with Macbank, using your funds during a month doesn't affect the interest payable on the remaining balance. With balance growth (and other "bonus" interest criteria) accounts - which are still liquid - your whole balance for a month may recieve no interest at all if you don't meet the criteria.
Base interest rates are, eg: Ubank 0%, ING 0.01%, Mac 4.75% - soon to be 5%
may as well be a term deposit account then
it's a 0.1% difference actually, so $100
That's ten GYG burritos!
$105 (approx) if interest is paid monthly and compounds on a $100k deposit..
…until you need to access the cash.
Then you need to make sure to do it on the first of the month to avoid losing any interest, and then you need to move ALL the cash out to somewhere else in order to earn interest on the remaining amount.
So it's only useful if you don't plan on touching the cash at all until you empty the account completely. Otherwise you're going to lose out.
I'll just stick with Macquarie for liquidity and Judo for long term higher interest.
Don't forget Rabobank. Their term deposit rates sometimes beat Judo.
$1 is so trivial, why even have it? :)
Because that's their chance to not pay any interest. It happens more frequently than you think, people get busy or go on holidays and forget about it.
Not everyone would setup auto transfers. Some would think they won't forget, but they do. Some rely on calendar reminders, easily dismissed without taking actions.
Ubank sends you a reminder if you havent grown your account - it says 'reminder that you must grow your account by $xxx by the end of the monthy to achieve bonus interest'. I had it just last week, as I had transferred some money from the save account to the spend account and forgot to top up the save account. Fortunately was able to transfer in enough money at the last minute to meet the end of March deadline
However, you are right that people will forget. Especially if you are using Ubank as your main spend account and have money moving between spend and save all the time, it can be easy to mess it up.
It also means that if you need to withdraw something, you will lose interest for that month entirely. If that happens once a year, you lose 1/12 of your bonus interest, which is .4% over the year (at 5% average)
Because Ubank is no longer a savings account it’s a never ending term deposit. Macquarie is a savings account.
If your balance goes down then you lose everything. So holiday planning money needs to be with another bank because once you use it, they don’t have to pay your interest.
For that month. Not for the entire year!
Slight exaggeration. You lose a month's interest. Saving takes discipline.
Best advice if you can't manage that is to have two accounts.
Losing 1 month will make your equivalent interest rate 4.675%. Thats worse than the big banks. (this ones exaggerated slightly)
@ATangk: Your "losses" are reduced after tax is considered but yes we (should) all understand that. Hence my two account comment.
Like many things, you pick the bank/account with the features which best suits your needs.
@dibbz Yep. As ASIC and APRA have shown an numerous occasions, Macquarie in number one for trust /s.
It's not deposit $1 required. It's grow balance by $1 required.
Not quite as bad as no withdrawals, but close to it.
Would be nice if you can share how you will grow your balance by $1 without depositing $1
Withdraw $10 and deposit $11 (withdraw $n, deposit $n+1).
There's a HUGE difference between grow your account at the end of the momnth by $1 and deposit $1, which was @coxymla's point.
@Igaf: You're saying you are depositing $n+1. Which clearly means you're depositing $1+ in that case. Perhaps you're just referring to the fact that it allows withdrawals.
@sentinel: Yes you can withdraw, which was @coxymla's clearly stated point.
To get bonus interest you not only have to cover that withdrawal before the eom, you also have to increase the account by at least $1 independent of Ubank's interest, which is where the real problem lies. Everyone can afford $1, not everyone can afford cumulative interest+$1
Depositing $1 is not the criterion, growing the previous month's balance (including Ubank interest) by $1, is.
Executive KPIs. It must count as an "user active" account
Because that's the scam, they know a percentage will forget a month or something will go wrong with their automatic scheduled deposit so no bonus interest for that month. Therefore the actual cost to the bank is lower and they can offer a pumped up rate.
It makes for a good deal if you don't experience a glitch. But from the banks side they know they won't have to pay out a lot of bonus interest.
I totally agree…that's why I switched all my $ to Macquarie…might be slightly lower interest but no BS …Ubank used to be good when they had no hoops but they lost a lot of people.
Come on judo
Get 5% return and get killed by inflation OR stocks?
Different purposes
and tax…
Good news – our Everyday Bonus Rate is going up
Good news, your bank customer numbers are going down, moving to a bank like Macquarie months ago because of your grow the balance requirement changes.
I had a ubank account since their inception, but their continual tweaking off their offer making it worse finally got to me :)
Did you close the accounts? Or keep them at $0 balance?
I keep mine at $0 balance
why ?
$0 balance
costs me nothing to hold the card and handy when promos like the recentish amazon one showed up
I doubt they'd ever give a sh*t. NAB is known to screw things up for customer benefits. Be it Citibank AU or uBank. Being one of the big four here means they can sit back and relax while still being filthy rich.
Great place to park my 20m from this Saturday division 1 win.
Unfortunately there is a maximum limit of 1 million only. You may need to open multiple accounts.
5.10% is still below ING 5.25%. Ubank's 4.85% right now is pitiful.
Edit: Ubank's 0.25% increase here is just in response to the RBA's 0.25% increase. Neg worthy.
ING 5.25% is max 100k and bucket load of hoops.. more Pitiful
You're not wrong ING has horrible hoops but you're pretty much guaranteed to have the best rates, they were 5.25 since March and will probs bump up to match again too.
Imo have a ING for money you definitely won't touch, use MACQ for everyday banking, MACQ saving for money you might touch, set up auto payments and you're good to go. Macq market place for deals and gift cards is just the cherry on top.
What should I do with my other $4 million?
share with me
I actually moved all my money out of ubank this month. I hung on partly for the extra 0.1% over Macquarie and partly because of inertia, but honestly the requirement to grow your balance across all Save accounts just sucked.
At least if they made it a per-Save account requirement (like Up or ING) then you could at plan ahead and manage it to a degree. As it stands, it's not that much different from a term deposit.
Pre Save account requirement is much worse .. at least Ubank give you til end of the month to qualify.. These other mobs if you miss depositing one month before you ar excluded from bonus interest month after.. bigger pain in the arse to then move your cash out and costs you more in long run..
Best way to manage this is just keep some savings in another account (ME bank) and move it back and forth
On the contrary. With Ubank if you don't grow the account you lose interest for every day of THAT month, with no chance of recovery. With ING for example you won't get interest for the NEXT month, which means you can (and should) move your money elsewhere for that month. Might lose a day or two's interest. On $100K that's about $15/day ($10/d taking tax into account).
Too many zeros in the max balance for us impecunious Ozbargainers!
wait for judo
Ubank, BIG PASS!
Why? Who better? App at least is pretty good. Osko service is tip top too
What makes an Osko service tip top? I bank with half a dozen brands and there is no difference
Some others don't have Osko, so this is above them. The $1 is still a trap though, make One mistake or withdraw before last day of month and you lose a month of bonus.
If you're gonna jump through hoops might as well go with another bank with higher rates like ING they have been 5.25% since March and have yet to bump up with the market with the recent increase too. Tho they tend to be 1 week later than other banks in that regard.
Since Ubank was acquired they are constantly change their requirements, when I was with them back in 2020 it was no hoops, then it was need to deposit 1000, then it was 200, then it was back to 1000, then back to 200, then 500 now it's the current hoops.
Nothing is stopping you from having multiple banks, imo you should have one that has the higher rates with hoops you can manage/auto payments for money that you definitely won't touch and another everyday account with no hoops savings for emergencies that you can tap into without losing the bonus (imo Macq is the best for this, no hoops, earn interest for both your transaction and savings account + access to discounted giftcards on their market place)
Any issues with redrawing/transfer out the money? any blockers, delays, tricky rules?
Nope.. they are not Judo Bank
Judo Bank has no issues other than that it's not osko.
$20K online daily withdrawal limit. Can be boosted to $100K.
Your big way to do money better
5.60% p.a.
whats this 5.6% rate then?
Ubank - too little, too late. I have used Ubank for more than a decade but gave up on them last month and finally moved all funds away from them. They have changed their hoops too many times and greatly inconvenienced customers. The last change was the final straw for me. If you don't mind lots of hoops, ING is good. For fairly easy hoops, Judo & ME Bank are good. Otherwise Macquarie & AMP Go are great with no hoops.
Yeah actively made their offering worse lol. Both lowered their rate AND added hoops. Way to F over all your customers.
Savings interest rates for Ubank and many other FIs were reduced in August in line with the RBA decision to cut the cash rate by 25 points. The growth requirement - and the way they apply it - was the reason many customers went elsewhere if Ozbargain comments are any indication.
They also lowered their rate out of cycle -0.15bp on top of the standard -0.25bp rate cuts early last year. That, on top of the hoops are why many people, including myself, looked for alternatives.
too many people left because of their stupid hoops now they are trying to save face by doing 1 dollar increase, nah bruh im staying with Macquarie coz you guys change requirements every other month, Macquarie set and forget done and dusted
Look it up.
It says it is 4.55%
Competitive interest savings
Earn a competitive variable interest rate of 4.55% p.a. interest on balances up to $5 million.
https://www.boq.com.au/personal/bank-and-save/simple-saver
The Smart Saver one at 5.15% has a lot of hoops
deposit a minimum of $1,000 to your linked Everyday Account from an External Account AND you make at least 5 direct debit transactions
Judo is just better. I dont get why anyone would use anything other than Judo + Your favourite transaction account
i like to see transfers com plete
No Osko; no fund movement if it's not a bank day.
The rate is good.
I have no issue with Judo savings account, 5.35% as of today, $300 monthly deposits, that's it. fund transfer on weekdays arrives within 2 hours. what to not like about. i dig their designated account feature for withdraw, a pretty good safety mechanism IMO.
Noob question. Say if you have $500,000 and you go with Macquarie bank does it mean that the first $250,000 will earn you 5.35% and amounts above $250,000 is 5%?
Yes, this is how it works assuming you're on the four month welcome rate. Once the first four months are up, you'll then drop back to the 5% rate up on balances up to $2m. See https://www.macquarie.com.au/everyday-banking/savings-accoun…
Note those higher rates you mentioned won't kick in until 22 May.
Why are people saying you get a 5% rate at Macquarie after 4 months, when the link says it is 4.75%?
Isn't the 4.75% before the rate increases to 5% on 22 May?
Ubank is terrible when they changed policy. For eg, when I withdraw large sum, I do Not get any bonus interest for 1 mth, unless I redeposit this large sum and $1 more!
Their term and condition are NOT FAVORABLE.
Stupid app won't accept my sisters proof of age card or defer to a Medicare Card.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/145iM6uuFS9m-Rul65--e…
Here is a full rundown of savings accounts. Might not be 100% up to date.
More info: https://www.accountsleaderboard.au/