Big Banks Punish Savers With Pathetic Interest Rates Despite Fed Hikes

Big banks such as JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America have been shafting depositors with terrible interest rates - refusing to keep pace with the Federal Reserve's rate hikes.

That's why he is richer than you .

JPMorgan, for example, has only raised its average deposit rate by 0.21 of a percentage point, despite the Federal Reserve raising rates by 1.25% over the same period - effectively punishing customers by locking them into historically low rates required to bail out the same banks which caused the financial crisis a decade ago.

The trend is so remarkable that analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., a rival Wall Street firm with a comparatively tiny banking franchise, published a report on the matter earlier this month, noting that rates on savings were "virtually untouched" in 2017, even as banks charged fatter payments on loans and other assets whose rates jumped along with the Fed's increases.

Consequently, a decade after the 2008 crisis, retirees and others who shun stocks and choose less volatile, government-insured savings accounts at big banks are still getting meager returns. -TheStreet

"Some of the big banks literally have not moved deposit yields higher at any time during this cycle of Fed rate hikes," said Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst at BankRate.com, which tracks the savings and lending industry.

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