Bank of America customers are earning next to nothing on their savings while online banks dangle rates more than 400 times higher.
The Charlotte-based giant still pays a baseline 0.01% APY on its standard savings account, a rate that has barely budged even as the Federal Reserve kept its benchmark rate elevated for much of the past two years.
On a $10,000 balance, that 0.01% works out to about $1 a year.
The same money in a high-yield savings account paying roughly 4% would earn closer to $400.
That gap is why so many depositors have quietly moved cash out of the big four banks and into digital-only competitors.
The reason is simple: Bank of America's standard savings account is not built to compete on yield.
It's built to sit alongside checking accounts, debit cards, and branch access.
Customers who want a better rate usually have to opt into the bank's Preferred Rewards program, which tiers benefits based on how much money they keep parked across Bank of America and Merrill accounts.
Even then, the top savings tiers don't come close to what many online banks advertise.
Some of Bank of America's higher-yield savings options come with balance caps, meaning the best rate applies only to your first few thousand dollars.
Once you cross that threshold, the rate can drop.
It's a structure that rewards smaller balances and leaves bigger savers earning less than they might expect.
For anyone who keeps a large emergency fund or a down-payment stash at the bank out of habit, that's real money left on the table every month.
Moving even part of it to a federally insured high-yield account can be done online in minutes, and federal deposit insurance still covers up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank, per ownership category.
Big-bank customers get branches, tellers, ATMs on nearly every corner, and a single app for checking, savings, and credit cards.
Online banks typically offer none of that.
For some people, that's worth paying for.
For others, splitting accounts, keeping checking where the branches are and stashing savings where the yield is, has become the default move.
Some high-yield accounts require a minimum opening deposit, a monthly direct deposit, or a set number of debit transactions to earn the advertised rate.
Others have no strings at all but can change their rate at any time, since savings rates are variable and not locked in.
It also pays to look at what you're already earning.
Log into your account, find the current APY on your savings, and compare it to a few reputable online banks.
If the difference is hundreds of dollars a year, that's not a rounding error.
That's a car payment, a chunk of a vacation, or a few months of groceries.
Most people open a savings account once and never revisit the rate.
That silence is profitable for them and expensive for you.
Final Thoughts
A ten-minute comparison once or twice a year is one of the highest-return habits in personal finance, and it costs nothing but a little attention.