When you decide to put your hard earned cash into an online savings account, safety is an important factor. The best online savings accounts will have several things in common, and if you know what to look for you can find some secure options that will help you get the most for your money. In most cases, an online savings account will be able to offer you a far better return on your investment than any savings account at a brick and mortar bank could ever offer. There are several important things to look out for when you are trying to find a secure online savings account. Here are three tips that can help you find the account you need.
Choose a bank that is FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) insured. This is an important factor because any online bank that is FDIC insured will give you the safety net you need in case of a bank failure. When a FDIC insured bank fails, the FDIC immediately intervenes and transfers the accounts to a new bank, meaning that the consumer will never even need to worry about their money or the safety of their deposits.
Look for a bank that offers easy to follow transactions. Since this is your money on the line, it is important that you are able to keep track of exactly what is happening to it and precisely when it happens. Your account should be viewable online at any time, and you need to have easy access to your money. Find out whether your online savings account will offer easy to do transfers and will normally have the money available for you quickly (most transfers should be available within a few days, but this can vary by bank).
Seek a bank that has a proven history. While the oldest and most established online banks are not necessarily the only safe and reliable banks on the World Wide Web, you can learn about the best rated and most well regarded banks from doing some investigation on the Internet. Look for the banks that have the highest consumer ratings and the banks that have a long history of high levels of customer satisfaction. Customers do not give their stamp of approval to a bank that has not safely taken care of their money, so the opinions of others who have used the online bank in the past can really be a valuable resource.
When you decide to open an online savings account, be sure to take the above three factors into consideration before opening your account. Be sure to place your money, and your trust, in a bank that offers you the most secure options.