CD Rates Center: Higher Interest Rates for Your Savings

We aggregate a lot of CD rate data from over twenty major banks, many of which are online banks with very good rates, but those rate tables are spread all across the site. To help you find the best rates, whether it’s across all the banks or at a specific bank, we’ve aggregated that data here.

At the moment, here are the banks we aggregate data from: Ally Bank, Bank of America, Bank of Internet, Capital One Direct Banking, Citibank, Corus Bank, Discover Bank, Dollar Savings Direct, E-LOAN, E*Trade Bank, Everbank, FNBO Direct, HSBC Direct, Imperial Capital Bank, ING Direct, Penfed Credit Union, Virtual Bank, & Wachovia Bank. We will maintain current CD rates as best as we can manage and always defer to the bank’s themselves for the most accurate rates.

CD Rates by Term

The following list covers all the posts with rate tables based on maturity term. These tables aggregate data from all the banks according to the maturity of the CD:

• Short-Term CD Rates – The best rates of CDs with less than 12 month maturities.
• Best 12-18 Month CD Rates – The best rates for CDs for 12 month and 18 month maturities.
• Less Than 24 Month CD Rates – The best rates for CDs with less than 24 month maturities.

CD Rates by Bank

The follow list of links go to CD rate pages for individuals banks (more will be added as we develop them):

• Ally Bank CD Rates
• FNBO Direct CD Rates
• HSBC Direct CD Rates
• ING Direct Bank CD Rates
• Wachovia Bank CD Rates

CD Rates

This is the most popular of the CD rate tables, for maturities of 12 and 18 months:

Bank	Effective Date	CD Rate (APY)	CD Term (Months)	Minimum Deposit
Ally Bank	11/13/09	1.99%	12	$0
ING Direct	11/6/09	1.75%	12	$1
Everbank	11/6/09	1.70%	18	$1,500
Bankrate National Avg	10/14/09	1.68%	12	$4,884
FNBO Direct	11/6/09	1.50%	18	$500
HSBC Direct	11/6/09	1.50%	12	$10
Imperial Capital Bank	11/6/09	2.00%	18	$2,000
Discover Bank	11/3/09	1.95%	18	$2,500
E-LOAN	11/6/09	1.85%	18	$10,000
Virtual Bank	11/6/09	1.77%	18	$10,000
Citibank	11/6/09	1.35%	18	$500
Penfed Credit Union	11/6/09	1.25%	12	$1,000
Capital One Direct Banking	11/6/09	1.15%	18	$5,000
Wachovia Bank	11/6/09	1.01%	16	$5,000

How CDs Work

As a refresher for how CDs work, you open a CD for a specified maturity period and earn interest over that period. If you need access to your funds, you must close the entire CD and will often incur an interest rate penalty. While this rate penalty differs from CD to CD and from bank to bank, a CD with a maturity period of less than twelve months will usually have a three month interest penalty. A CD of twelve months or greater will have a six month interest penalty. As you can see from the rate data, CDs usually have higher yields than savings accounts and money market accounts but lack the same flexibility.

They can play an important role in your financial planning as you won’t find a safer investment with a higher rate of return.