Depositors May Have to Wait a Bit Longer for Interest Rates to Rise

NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- RateWatch, a premier banking data and analytics service owned by TheStreet, Inc. (NASDAQ: TST) reported today that interest rates for savings products generally decreased over the previous week with the average national rate on a 2-year, 3-year, 4-year, and 5-year CD decreasing by 0.01 percent based on data collected from over 90,000 financial institution locations.

Bank deposit rates have been range-bound at historically low levels because the Federal Reserve has kept its target range for the short-term federal funds rate in a range of zero to 0.25% since late 2008.  While the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp's Transaction Account Guarantee Program -- which provided unlimited insurance coverage for non-interest bearing transaction accounts -- has ended, banks are flush with liquidity, making it unlikely that there will be significant competition for deposits over the short term. 

It appears that depositors may have to wait a bit longer for interest rates to begin to rise, but for the banking industry, the yield curve has been improving.  Long-term U.S. Treasury securities were trading at a yield of 1.81% Tuesday morning, with yields as high as 1.91% on Jan. 3, rising from a range of 1.60% only a month earlier.  During this painful economic cycle, U.S. Treasury yields briefly went as low as 1.38% in July.

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NATIONAL AVERAGE RESULTS - $10K

TOP RATE ISSUERS - $10K
This is a list of issuers with top interest rates.  The issuer's Financial Strength Rating is an independent, unbiased evaluation of quarterly regulatory statements. Institutions are assigned a letter grade of A-E with "A" representing the highest rating based on a review of many aspects of financial safety including capitalization, asset quality, profitability and liquidity. For more information, visit www.weissratings.com/help/what-our-ratings-mean.aspx.  Information is believed to be accurate, but not guaranteed.

Data is surveyed weekly with averages calculated each Monday afternoon from RateWatch's unbiased national interest rate survey of over 90,000 financial institution locations across the United States.

About RateWatch For over 20 years, RateWatch has been the premier provider of competitive interest rate and product information to financial institutions across the United States.  Consistently providing top quality, highly relevant data RateWatch maintains the largest database in the industry with deposit, loan, and fee information monitoring over 90,000 locations. Rate surveys, product comparisons, financial strength reporting, local/regional/national averages, fee reporting, specialty reports and more are available.  To learn more about RateWatch, visit www.rate-watch.com.  RateWatch is a division of TheStreet, Inc.

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SOURCE TheStreet