GMAC (General Motors Acceptance Corporation) is the financial services arm of General Motors. GMAC Bank along with other sister companies are all subdivisions of ResCap Holding. Currently the company has 39,000 employees and revenues of $19.2 billion annually. The company GMAC Bank itself was established in 2001. With all of its sister companies, it’s quite a large organization.

The money market account they offer is very similar to accounts offered by other banks. Currently the bank is offering a 3.00% APY rate of return on money in its savings accounts, which is pretty typical in today’s market. It’s a decent rate, but certainly not the highest. Like most other online savings banks, your money is FDIC insured.

The major benefit of GMAC Bank’s money market savings account is that it offers its account holders a debit card to withdraw money as they need to. In addition, they will refund up to $6.00 a month in ATM fees that other banks charge you for using their ATM, so if you make just a few transactions a month, you can use the card just about anywhere and get free ATM service. GMAC Bank’s account holders get free check writing privileges, and get an initial order of 50 checks for free. This is very beneficial for anyone who wants to use the account as an emergency fund because it makes the money a lot easier to get to.

The fees that GMAC bank has are a bit higher than others. You have to have a minimum balance of $500.00 to avoid a $5.00 monthly service fee, as opposed to most other high-yield savings accounts which have no minimum balance. You will also be charged $10.00 if you make more than six transactions per month, and there are a number of other fees for things such as stop payments, official checks, check copies, wire transfers, and statement copies. If you’re going to make use of any of the fee-based services, you’ll probably want to find another bank with lower fees.

GMAC Bank has had a lot of finacnial problems because of the sub-prime mortgage mess and many question whether or not GMAC’s four consecutive quarterly loses will continue. The FDIC actually ordered GMAC to provide GMAC bank $3 billion in capital to keep it a float. Because of GMAC’s financial problems, you should definitely not put more than $95,000 in the account to make sure that all of your money is insured.

In some cases GMAC Bank is a great place to park your money, in other cases there are better options. If you need fast access to your money, GMAC Bank is a good option since it gives its account holders check writing privileges and a debit card. If you want the absolute highest rate or want to make use of any of the things that GMAC Bank charges a fee for, you’re probably better off finding another online savings bank such as Emigrant Direct or HSBC Direct.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 2:05 pm 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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