Many banks are looking for ways to set themselves apart from the pack by offering better interest rates and additional account features that others can’t match. In its first two years of operation, Flagstar has done their best to accomplish that. At a time when ING Direct was offering a 4.50% APY, Flagstar threw their hat into a ring offering 5.30% APY on savings. Interest rates have since gone down, but Flagstar is still near or at the top with an interest rate of 3.65% APY.

Flagstar is a fairly established bank, so you know that they’re going to be around for a while. They’re headquartered in Troy, Michigan and have over $15 billion in assets. They also have banks in Indiana and Georgia. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and is said to be the largest publicly held savings bank in the Midwest.

Flagstar’s Express Money Market Account offers an extremely competitive 3.65% APY no any money in the account. This is about as good as you’re going to find in money market accounts right now, with one or two exceptions. In addition to offering a very competitive rate, the account requires no minimum balance to open or maintain the account. In addition, there are no fees to speak of to hold an account.

You can transfer money in and out of the account in a few different ways. You can use the standard ACH electronic transfer service, but they do have some relatively low maximum deposits. You can only deposit a maximum of $5,000 per month and $2,000 per day into the account through Flagstar’s ACH transfer service, so if you have a lot of cash you want to put into savings, you should probably keep looking. If you initiate the ACH transfer from your home bank account, you can deposit as much as you’d like. You can also deposit money through wire transfers (which is free), and through direct deposit if you’d like.

A very good feature of the Flagstar account is that they offer a Visa Debit Card which can be used without charge on the Allpoint network (they have ATM’s just about everywhere). In addition they offer you free personal checks to make use of, but unfortunately because of federal law, you’re limited to writing 3 checks a month and a maximum of 6 non-ATM withdrawals per month.

The application process is relatively straight forward. It’s a lot easier than some banks, but you do have to mail in a signature card. The bank contacts Transunion to check your credit score, but they merely perform a soft credit pull so that your credit score will not be negatively effected.

Overall Flagstar offers a very competitive savings account that’s definitely worth considering if you’re planning on opening a savings account anytime soon. The only real drawback is the limitation in ACH transfers which can be overcome if you make the request from your bank. It’s definitely a winner.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 7:31 am and is filed under reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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