the mozo blog

With high competition for customers on both the lending and savings/deposit fronts, it is often the everyday transaction account that gets forgotten by many providers and consumers. Viewed by many as a simple vanilla account, many Australians are oblivious to the fact that there are some great, innovative products out there, all geared to help them save money.

For example, both BankWest and ING Direct offer transaction accounts that reimburse ATM fees. A more innovative product is Suncorp Bank’s everyday options account, which is an everyday account that can link to multiple savings accounts as well as lock away part of your funds to a term deposit “flexiRate”.

St. George’s latest offering, St George SENSE Savings, is similar in many ways to Suncorp’s with a few different bells and whistles. The ‘SENSE’ account is effectively an amalgam of St. George’s leading savings and transactions accounts with a few clever gimmicks to help things along.

The first innovative add on is that you receive a combined statement for both accounts. SENSE also comes with a range of pretty snazzy and informative graphs that help you track your spending. One of them is a pie chart that breaks down your everyday spending by categories, such as leisure, home expenses, and transport. There’s also a bar graph version that shows these amounts month to month. Plus you get a graph outlining your savings progress in relation to your set target.

There’s also the Sense Rounding Contribution graph -and this is what really sets this product apart. What exactly is a rounding contribution? Well, every time you make a purchase on your debit card, the SENSE account automatically rounds up the transaction to the nearest dollar and takes that balance from your everyday account and puts it into your savings bucket. For example, say I bought a coffee and a croissant on my way in to work that costs me $5.30. If I pay using my SENSE account, $6 gets taken out of my account. $5.30 goes to the barista and the remaining $0.70 goes into my SENSE savings account. The same process also applies to all BPay transactions too. It’s a really nifty way to start saving without putting any effort in.

All the standard perks come too – if you deposit over $2000 a month into the account you don’t pay an annual fee, there’s no minimum balance required, a VISA debit card, and all the convenience of having linked accounts, such as ease of transfers and regular payments. The savings account comes with a reasonable 4.85% rate as well.

So hats off to St. George. They’ve managed to craft a simple, yet intuitive and innovative product that redefines the relationship between the transaction and the savings account. For all those that struggle with saving, or simply having to manage two accounts, this is one option that could make a lot of SENSE.

Find the best savings account rates at mozo.com.au.

State against State. Mate against Mate. It’s a line that epitomises rugby league’s annual showcase of interstate rivalry, underscoring the passion and pride on display between the NSW cockroaches and the cane toads from Queensland. With rugby league’s annual State of Origin series now decided, it’s time to bring back the financial biff and pit the states head on!

Since Origin is about representing your state, community and people, we’ve decided to use what consumers have said about their banks hailing from each particular state to create an overall picture. So using the 30,000 bank reviews you’ve submitted, it’s time for Mozo’s annual ‘Rate of Origin’. State against state. Rate against rate.

With 7371 reviews behind them and big players like Westpac, Macquarie and St. George as well as no less than 4 credit unions on our list of the top 10 Australian banks in the side, NSW comes in as strong favourites. As always, Queensland are the underdogs, conceding a significant numerical advantage in both number of reviews (2416) and number of providers (10 to NSW’s 15). They’re led by Queensland stalwarts like Suncorp, Bank of Queensland and their sole representative in our top 10, CUA.

With the NSW camp already shattered and in turmoil after losing their fifth straight origin series, it will come as another body blow to the state and their footballers that NSW is getting dusted not only on the field but also in their wallets. NSW banks put up a solid if unspectacular average overall rating of 6.91, led by strong performances by Teachers Credit Union and the Greater Building Society. However, with old hands Suncorp and Bank of Queensland ably steering them round the park and strong efforts from CUA and Heritage Building Society, the banana benders have stormed home with an overall rating of 7.34 to claim the Origin title.

The real difference between the sides was the abject performance of Westpac, whose rating of 6.7 was the catalyst to NSW’s demise. If you remove Westpac from the equation, NSW’s rating rises to 7.25, a mere drop goal away from victory. NSW will be looking for Westpac to pick up their game over the next year to avoid the pain and humiliation of another Rate of Origin defeat.

So as the dust settles and the xxxx’s are cracked in bank head offices around Brisbane and wider Queensland after another fiery clash between these two interstate rivals, I implore all Origin fans out there to get behind your state and rate your bank to give your state a shot at Origin glory next year!