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Web site helps consumers find highest interest rates

Sibahle Malinga
By Sibahle Malinga, ITWeb senior news journalist.
Johannesburg, 29 Sept 2016
Until now it has been difficult for bank clients to determine which savings account best matches their requirements, says My Treasury's Michael Kransdorff.
Until now it has been difficult for bank clients to determine which savings account best matches their requirements, says My Treasury's Michael Kransdorff.

A new price comparison Web site allows savers to compare saving and investment options online to ensure they get the highest interest rates based on their individual requirements.

MyTreasury.co.za, owned by a start-up called My Treasury, offers an efficient way to find the best savings account that offers consumers the highest interest rate by matching savers to cash investment products based on their savings needs. The platform uses an algorithm which searches 670 different interest rates at eight deposit taking institutions (Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank, FNB, Investec, Capitec, Postbank, and Bidvest) to find users the best product.

Clients can specify liquidity ranging from one day to five years and amounts from R1 000 to R50 million. The optimiser service is free and provides options based on a few simple questions, says the start-up.

Michael Kransdorff, founder and chief economist of My Treasury, says until now it has been virtually impossible for bank clients to determine which savings account best matches their requirements as it has not been easy to find bank rate data.

"Savings accounts are a great starting point for encouraging smarter wealth management. Just about everyone with an income has a bank account, and by encouraging people to see their ordinary bank accounts as tools for actively growing wealth, we hope to make South Africans more excited about saving. It doesn't cost you anything to get higher returns on your cash, but you need to know where to look," says Kransdorff.

Efficient saving, he adds, can make a massive difference to your wealth. Moving your cash from a call account that offers returns of 3% to a long term fixed deposit with an interest rate of 10% for example, would effectively double your wealth over ten years.

Explaining how it works, Kransdorff says users are prompted to answer a few basic questions such as the amount they want to invest, how quickly they need access to their cash, whether they want to invest a fixed amount or top up regularly etc.

"The optimiser then searches through over 650 different interest rates to find the accounts that match the required criteria and then ranks them by the highest interest rate. In the case of equivalent top rates, the algorithm accounts for tie breaker criteria, such as preferential liquidity. Users can further refine their results using the filter option on the results page - by bank, liquidity etc," he points out.

It is no longer necessary to contact every financial institution directly and attempt to acquire an exhaustive list of rates for all relevant products and then attempt to try to identify and compare relevantly similar products across institutions. That hypothetical process can now effectively be achieved in less than a minute, Kransdorff asserts.

My Treasury was founded by Kransdorff and partners Simon Shear and Daniel Rubenstein. As an economist, Kransdorff says he saw a need to demystify saving and wanted to make it easier for the man on the street to access the best rates.

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