Everyone should have a little cash stashed away for a rainy day. After all you never know when an emergency is going to come up. I first starting saving online many years ago with ING Direct. I really liked ING and their website is great. I liked them so much I refinanced my mortgage with them. I've since paid off my mortgage.
Even though I liked ING, savings is all about returns and HSBC Online consistently pays more than ING. So a couple years ago I moved my savings to HSBC. I used my ING savings to pay of my mortgage and basically started over with HSBC.
Currently ING is paying 3.4% and HSBC is paying 3.55%. At those rates its really not worth it to change accounts. At the time I switched the difference was 4.5% versus 5%.
ING goes out of their way to make every process smooth, they really make saving enjoyable. HSBC isn't that bad either. One irritant is that I get two or three emails alerting me of my automatic transfers. I am aware of these transfers, I set them up. One email would suffice.
So if you are choosing between ING or HSBC I don't think you can go wrong. Both offer easy hassle free savings accounts with online access. I'm currently using HSBC but I could see using ING in the future, especially now that ING has purchased ShareBuilder. So I would visit each site, see which one suits you better.
The most important factor is not which bank you choose, but that you save your money. So stop reading already and start saving!
*I'm not affiliated with either company.
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Comments
3 Comments so far
Like you, I have online accounts at both banks and would also recommend them if you wanted a user-friendly website with an above average rate. Neither bank is perfect with ING having a fairly low for online savings accounts and HSBC account having an onerous setup procedure (at least more onerous than most other online banks).
If you are a rate chaser, there are 30+ online banks offering rates higher than HSBC (currently as high as 4.6% at OneUnited). Of course, some of these banks require you sign up for an online checking account too, impose restrictive fees and limitations, or have elevated minimum deposit requirements.
[...] Online Savings Accounts: HSBC vs ING [...]
I just did a similar analysis and for me HSBC is the better choice. ING is the easier to use and smoother of the two, but HSBC has a better APY.