ING Belgium has increased the total savings rate on one of its accounts to 3%, the first time that any Belgian bank has raised rates this high since the early 2010s.
From 1 December, the bank's Tempo account holders will earn a base rate of 1.15% and a fidelity premium rate of 1.85% on their savings. Customers will be able to deposit a maximum of €500 on the account each month.
Rates on the bank's traditional savings account will also increase, albeit to a much lower level of 0.80%. This is 0.1 percentage point more than previously offered.
Real savings?
ING's announcement of the rate hikes came on the same day that Eurostat reported that year-on-year eurozone inflation had fallen below 3% (to 2.90%) for the first time in two years.
However, experts warned that the fact that ING's Tempo savings rate is higher than the current rate of inflation does not mean that customers' "real" savings rate (which takes into account inflation) will be positive.
"Even with nominal rates between 2.5% and 3%, real rates on savings accounts are likely to remain negative," Eric Dor, Director of Economic Studies at the IESEG School of Management, told l'Echo.
In particular, Dor explained that the newly announced year-on-year inflation rate involves comparing current prices with those in October last year, when eurozone inflation peaked at 10.6%.
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Over the full course of this year, however, eurozone inflation is expected to remain well above 3%. This is especially true for Belgium: the Federal Planning Bureau (FPB) recently forecast that the country's inflation rate will reach 4.4% this year before falling to just 4.1% in 2024.
In a separate press release, Dor noted that Belgium's fall in annual inflation to near zero in October was largely a consequence of a steep decline in energy prices over the past year. He added that, excluding energy, Belgium's current annual inflation rate is 6.5%, which is "rather higher than the average for the eurozone countries for which data are already available".
Other banks follow suit
ING is not the only major Belgium-based bank which has increased savings rates over the past few days. Belfius recently announced that its Fidelity savings account rate will increase to 2%, up from 1.25%. Its traditional savings account rate will also rise from 1% to 1.10%.
According to data compiled by l'Echo, the second-highest total savings rate currently offered in Belgium is Santandar's Vision Max account, which provides a total rate of 2.85% (1% base + 1.85% fidelity premium).
The third highest is MeDirect's newly announced Essential Epargne account, which offers a total rate of 2.80% (2% base + 0.80% fidelity premium).
