Is Max too good to be true? How can I earn more money on my cash without paying expensive fees, being subject to stiff restrictions on transferring my money, or maintaining a high minimum balance?

We heard many versions of these questions last week when we presented Max at Finovate. Banks, brokerages, and RIA platform representatives all came over to meet us, as well as individuals eager to try out Max for themselves.  We were excited to receive some terrific press coverage from journalists who really grapsed what we’re doing.  To address some of the questions we recieved, let’s dispel a few Max myths:

Max is not a bank, and Max never takes custody of your funds. Many customers have asked how they can send us money to optimize. With Max, you don’t send us any money.  Your money remains in your own bank accounts, automatically moving between your own accounts to where you can earn the best yield each month.

There is no minimum balance required to use Max. These are your accounts, so the only minimums are those imposed by the banks. The online banks in our system have account minimums of either zero or $1.00.  They charge no monthly fees.  The only minimums that might apply are those imposed by your own checking account; often banks will require that you keep a minimum of $1,500 to avoid monthly fees.  But Max does not impose any minimum balance requirement.

There are no incremental transfer fees associated with the monthly optimizations. Every three months, Max charges a simple fee of 0.02% on the balance that is being optimized in your linked online savings accounts, for a total of 0.08% per year. This works out to approximately 10% of the gain that most members can expect by using Max, while our members keep the remaining 90% of the gain. We don’t charge a fee on the money that’s in your checking account.

There is no term to the deposits. These are savings accounts, held in your name, to which you have daily access. The rates offered by these online banks are typically better than even a 5-year CD at most brick-and mortar banks.  These rates are so good simply because the online banks don’t have to pay for the costly overhead of branches.  This saves them ~1.50%, and they’re passing on roughly half of these savings to depositors in the form of higher rates That’s why most Max members today are earning approximately 0.90%, which is about 0.80% higher than the national savings average and almost 0.90% higher than the yield on most money market funds.

Max keeps you optimized automatically. Max doesn’t just tell you what you need to do to earn more on your cash; Max does it for you. The Max system is fully automated, so you set it up once and then Max does the rest.  Max monitors interest rates daily, and once a month, instructs your banks to send funds between one another to keep you optimized, maximizing your interest income while staying within the FDIC insurance limits at each bank, and restoring your checking account to your desired balance each month.  You can log into Max at any time and see your balances, view the status of each of these transfers, request intra-month transfers via our Intelligent Funds Transfer^SM feature, and change settings to customize how Max works for you.  Come tax time, we plan to have in place a feature that delivers all of your 1099s to you via a single PDF, eliminating the hassle of retrieving a separate tax form for each account you hold.

Have more questions? You can reach Max Member Services at member.services@maxmyinterest.com.