What’s best for savers who’ve lost £160bn of interest in seven years?

d Not many experts thought that the “emergency” base rate cut to 0.5% on March 5, 2009 would last for long. But seven years later savers have lost around £160bn in interest, while the prospect of rate rises are slipping further into the distance. In the immediate aftermath of the cut to 0.5%, rates for savers remained relatively high. Our analysis shows how cash Isas were offering 3%, and notice accounts 3.5%, in March 2009, and for the next couple of years they hovered around this level. After all, most banks and building societies were desperate for deposits after the great financial crash, so they were willing to pay far above the Bank of England base rate. The stories you need to read, in one handy email Read more The real villain turns out to be the Funding for Lending government programme introduced in July 2012, which effectively provided cheap money for cash-strapped lenders. The effect was almost instantaneous: banks no longer needed to attract cash from savers, so they cut the rates on offer. Susan Hannums of Savingschampion.co.uk says: “While the base rate hitting the record 0.5% was bad enough, it was Funding for Lending that had one of the biggest impacts. Almost overnight, best-buy rates for savers dropped like a stone, followed by an unprecedented number of reductions on existing rates. “Today we’ve hit over 4,000 rate reductions for existing savers, with little sign of this slowing down. This means all savers would be wise to keep checking the rate they are getting, and to switch to improve returns when they are no longer competitive. “With almost 50% of easy-access accounts paying 0.5% or less, and the best-paying 1.55%, it’s easy to see why so many need to switch.”