Providentdirect was created for people who use the internet to do their banking as part of an online division of Provident Bank located in Maryland and Virginia. Currently, what they require to open an online account is that you are eighteen years old, can provide your home address, social security number, driver’s license number with issue date and expiration date. There have been some complaints that customers have a hard time getting their issue date for online. Since the Provident Bank is headquartered in Maryland, this may be something that is on Maryland licenses and not universally used around the states. Call customer service to explain. Lastly you need to either electronically transfer funds from one of your other checking or savings account or send a check. Like many of the banks I review, this one is insured by the FDIC. Your ATM card will arrive within seven to ten business days after opening the account.

Providentdirect takes direct deposits, automated transfers which you will be able to being within a week of your account being open. You can get both paper and online statements (let’s be green here and get the statements online and print them out or better yet, save them to your computer).

Providentdirect does have a maximum initial deposit of $200,000 and the maximum allowed once the account is open is $500,000.

Like similar online savings account, you will need to validate several small deposits in your funding account if you are using automatic transfers.

Providentdirect has a $100 minimum to open for $3.75% on all balances. Please be aware however, like all accounts, the interest does change. They also charge for excess transactions for $5 per excess transaction. You have six months before you can withdraw from this online savings account or you will incur a fee of $25.00.

Overall, Providentdirect offers 3.75% APY (as of August 22, 2008), a minimum of $100 to open, ATM card, comparable fees to other online accounts and allows up to $500,000 in this online savings. However, since FDIC only covers $100,000 per account, your best bet would be to put that money in separate accounts.

I think this is a reasonable account for someone transferring funds around looking for better rates. The minimum being $100 to open may not be feasible for someone starting an account and Providentdirect does not provide for minor or business accounts. Outside of that, it seems to be a decent account to have and they appear to have taken care of many of the website issues that had incurred earlier this year.

Tags: FDIC, online savings, Providentdirect

This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 3:21 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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