The Mistake Nearly Everyone Is Making With Their Cash

Portions originally published in ThinkAdvisor on April 18, 2023

In the weeks since the sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, other banks, brokers and fintechs have scrambled to roll out increased FDIC insurance solutions to capitalize on the opportunity to attract new deposits. Unfortunately, in the mad rush to roll out something, anything, they are exposing your clients to the very same risks that they should be seeking to avoid.

The collapse of SVB was scary for depositors for two reasons.

First, when a bank fails, any deposits in excess of $250,000 — the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. limit — leave depositors unsecured, which means they may not get all of their money back.

Second, when a bank fails, even insured deposits can’t be withdrawn until the FDIC takes over the operations of the bank or orchestrates a sale. 

If you think about why clients hold cash, it’s for safety and liquidity. Any solution that puts either safety or liquidity at risk would defeat the purpose of holding cash. That’s why we created MaxMyInterest.com and MaxForAdvisors.com, to create a better, safer, more liquid, and higher-yielding way for clients to manage cash.

The Problem With Sweep Accounts

For decades, banks and brokerage firms have used sweep accounts (known in the industry as brokered deposits) to earn a spread for themselves on client cash. While these solutions are marketed to clients as a means of keeping cash safe by obtaining increased deposit insurance, if you peek under the hood, you’ll find that they expose clients to safety and liquidity risks and are rife with conflicts of interest. 

To identify these risks, it’s first helpful to understand how these sweep programs work. Essentially, an originating institution — could be a bank, brokerage firm, or fintech company — tells you they can provide increased FDIC insurance by spreading (selling) your cash across their network of other banks. That may sound okay on paper, but the reality is that your cash gets swept up into omnibus accounts held in the bank’s name, not in the client’s name. 

This means that if the originating institution were to fail, your clients would lose access to all their funds until the resolution process is complete. In the case of a bank, that may happen in a matter of days, but if a fintech has custody of a client’s funds and they fail, clients may be stuck waiting through a bankruptcy process. Just ask anyone who thought their funds were safe at FTX. 

If a client needed that cash to buy equities when the market dips, too bad. And if they needed the money to make a tax payment or close on the purchase of a house, they may be out of luck, with dire consequences. Clients can’t contact the underlying banks that hold their funds, since they have no relationship with them. 

Furthermore, they don’t know to whom their deposits were sold, and if they happened to be placed with a bank where clients already hold other deposits, they may overlap and exceed the FDIC limits. This means that clients might not be fully insured, even when you thought they were. 

Avoiding Unnecessary Risk

These risks are avoidable. In fact, the main beneficiary of clients taking on these risks is the very institution that is brokering their deposits, since in the process of selling deposits out to other banks, they keep a spread for themselves, passing along a net rate to the customer while hiding the embedded fee or spread that they’re keeping. In short, there’s a conflict of interest that leaves the depositor with less yield and more risk than had they just opened more bank accounts directly in their own name. 

In 2009, in the midst of the Financial Crisis, I identified these risks and began managing my own cash differently, spreading it out across my own accounts held directly at multiple banks, so that I’d have the benefit of increased FDIC insurance coverage while maintaining full visibility, liquidity, and control over my cash, with no single point of failure. When I found that my safer approach had also generated tens of thousands of dollars of incremental yield, I figured that many more people could benefit from this same approach, and we created MaxMyInterest in 2013 to create a new, safer, higher-yielding way to manage cash.

It Pays to Read the Fine Print

Not 48 hours after the collapse of SVB, many advisors, banks and fintechs began repeating the same mistakes of the past. They looked for solutions that purport to keep cash safe without considering the implications of these solutions for safety and liquidity. As a fiduciary, when it comes to your clients’ cash, it pays to read the fine print. By avoiding brokered sweep accounts, you can keep cash safer, more liquid, and earn higher yields at the same time.

BREAKING: Financial Advisor Clients Can Now Earn 5% on Cash, FDIC-Insured

For much of the last decade, the yield on cash has been practically nonexistent. As a result, cash was simply not that high a priority for clients or their advisors. 

In 2023, it’s a different story. As the Federal Reserve began to raise rates aggressively to fight inflationary pressures, the rates paid on deposits has risen dramaticallyWith minimal effort, clients could be earning more than 5% on their cash reserves, while keeping their funds FDIC-insured.

How Much Cash Do Clients Hold?

Research from the 2022 Capgemini World Wealth Report shows that HNW U.S. households keep 20% of their net worth in cash. Since advisors often keep a single-digit percentage of client portfolios in cash, the majority of client cash is held away. A $2 million dollar brokerage client might be keeping $450,000 in cash, the vast majority of which sits outside the brokerage account in a brick-and-mortar bank earning next-to-nothing.

After a decade of enduring few good choices for cash, clients need help figuring out where to put the cash they have chosen not to keep in their brokerage accounts. And as this cash comes into view, advisors can help clients identify other asset classes that might provide better returns than cash over time.

Where Should Clients Keep Cash?

Now that rates are over 5%, more advisors will no doubt be helping clients answer the question, “Where should I be keeping my cash?” Today clients often turn to Google, which often leads to visiting an advertising-driven rate comparison site that has incentives to promote a bank that may not offer the best options. And for higher-net-worth clients, a single bank can’t provide sufficient FDIC insurance coverage, nor is there any guarantee that the bank that pays a high yield today will continue to provide competitive yield over time. Fortunately, there’s a way to help clients continuously earn the best yield without advertising or ongoing effort.

Is There a Solution for Advisors and Clients?

MaxMyInterest (or just “Max” as it’s commonly known) is a platform that helps clients open and manage high-yield savings accounts, so they can take advantage of rate changes at banks while staying below the FDIC limits even if they hold large cash balances. Advisors can register for a free client dashboard in 2 minutes at MaxForAdvisors.com, providing access to current rates, client balances, and the ability to help clients enroll in just a few minutes.

Voted as the best cash platform for advisors and their clients according to the T3/Insiders Forum survey for 5 years running, and winner of the “Wealthies” Award from WealthManagement.com, Max is a solution that’s truly differentiated and a WealthTech success story.

With Max, a client’s cash is always safe, fully liquid, and held in their own FDIC-insured bank accounts. Max provides a dashboard and consolidated tax reporting, while clients can receive statements from their banks and contact them directly to access their funds same-day if needed. Max integrates with leading wealth management platforms including Orion, Redtail, Wealthbox, MoneyGuide, and Morningstar ByAllAccounts. 

How Do I Get Started as an Advisor?

Visit MaxForAdvisors.com to register for free access to the Max Advisor Dashboard, where you can view client balances and access materials to share with clients. Many advisors also choose to share articles about Max from leading publications such as The Wall Street Journal with clients. 

The Max Advisor Dashboard includes a getting started guide, fact sheet that provides up-to-date rate information, and the ability to search support content. Have questions? Advisors can schedule a phone call or request a live demo to find out how they can get started.

Now is the time to help clients start earning more on their cash. Register at MaxForAdvisors.com today to learn more and get started.

Max’s top rate tops 5%

Today marks an exciting day in the history of banking. Today, the highest rate on the MaxMyInterest.com platform has topped 5% for the first time, proving that by creating a more efficient banking system, customers and banks can both be made better off.

As a result of our team’s hard work, millions of American households now have access to the best yields in the country on high-yield savings accounts – accounts that can be opened in less than 2 minutes without the need to fill out endless forms, set logins or passwords, or wait for trial deposits. And since Max doesn’t accept advertising or referral fees, banks are able to attract the highest quality customers at lower cost, enabling them to pass along higher interest rates to depositors.

How did we get here?

Our team has been working relentlessly for nearly 10 years to wring out every inefficiency we could from the banking system. The result: higher yields for depositors with greater safety and same-day liquidity. And for banks, lower operating costs and less risk. Today, the average interest rate paid on a savings account in America is a paltry 0.35%. But Max members are earning up to 5.01% APY on exactly the same product: FDIC-insured bank accounts.

The concept for Max dates back to the Financial Crisis when banks were failing and I had a need to find a safer place to keep my cash. The traditional brokered deposit solutions offered by the major brokerage firms suffered from several fundamental flaws. They were marketed as safe and liquid, but after looking under the hood I concluded these deposits were not necessarily fully insured nor were they fully liquid. So, I set out to find a better way to manage cash.

Discovering Higher Yield

In my search to figure out how to keep cash safe, I stumbled upon online banks, which offered higher yield than traditional brick-and-mortar banks since they didn’t have to incur the costs associated with operating branches. Since they were FDIC-insured just like any other bank account, it didn’t really matter which banks I picked. So long as I kept my balances below the FDIC insurance limit at each bank, my funds were effectively backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government.

As we got started, we learned that the biggest thing standing between people and their ability to earn more on their cash was themselves. People are busy, and managing cash is never at the top of your “To Do” list. So, we invested several years to figure out how to make it easy to open multiple bank accounts at once by filling out a single form. That way, whenever we identified higher rates, our software could help customers reallocate their cash among their own bank accounts in search of the highest yield, while keeping all funds within the FDIC insurance limits at each bank.

Impact

Today, many of our clients are earning tens of thousands of dollars more in interest each year than they would if they had just left their cash in their existing brick-and-mortar bank or brokerage account. That’s enough for an extra ski vacation each year, summer camp for your kids, or a nice contribution to your niece’s college fund. Compounded annually, using Max could fully cover college tuition for your kids, buy a new car, or enable you to make impactful charitable donations to the causes that matter to you most.

Economists look for solutions that are pareto efficient, meaning that everyone is made better off as a result. In Max, we’re proud to have built a solution that helps make depositors and banks better off. It’s easy to enroll at MaxMyInterest.com to start earning up to 5.01% APY on your cash, held directly in your own FDIC-insured bank accounts. And the sooner you start, the more you can earn!

How the 2008 Financial Crisis led to a better way to manage cash

Maklay62 / Pixabay

(Originally published on ValueWalk April 28, 2020)

Mark Twain is reputed to have said that “history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” The events of the past few months have certainly conjured up many memories of the Financial Crisis, and for those following bank stocks, the emotional roller coaster of 2008-2009 feels all-too-present today. The fate of many of our nation’s banks may rest largely on how long our economic paralysis is sustained in support of the greater good of public health.

Bankers and research analysts agree that American banks are much better-capitalized than they were a dozen years ago and should be able to withstand several months of severe economic contraction. But if the economy were to remain largely shut for six months, absent a windfall of additional money-printing from the Fed, another financial crisis could ensue atop our existing humanitarian crisis.

With all this doom and gloom, there is a glimmer of hope. Like every other financial or humanitarian catastrophe to befall our modern age – World War I, The Great Depression, World War II, Black Monday, the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, the Dot-com bust, 9/11, and the most recent Financial Crisis  – the path downwards has been followed by an even more ebullient path upwards. The shape, timeline, and certainly of any future recovery is unknowable, but we can hold out hope that it will at least rhyme with the events of the past.

I’ve had the experience of living and working through several market dislocations. From each one, I’ve sought to learn how to extrapolate from relevant data and facts, and, perhaps more importantly, how to recognize and curtail emotions. While every investment brochure disclaims that “past performance is not indicative of future results,” as an investor, it’s important to learn from your own past performance and journal your mistakes. Only by dissecting your thought processes at the time – both rational and emotional – can you endeavor to make better decisions the next time you are faced with a similar set of facts and circumstances.

Online Banks: The Financial Crisis As Inspiration

I was stationed in Tokyo during the Financial Crisis, working as an investment banker for one of the largest American banks, which had recently acquired one of Japan’s largest brokerage firms. I arrived in August 2007, just after closing the last private equity-based capital raise that involved so-called “Toggle Notes,” where a borrower could elect whether to pay the interest it owed in cash or in-kind (i.e. more debt.) It was illustrative of just how favorable the capital markets had become for issuers – a sign of a raging bull market where seemingly nothing could go wrong.

As an analyst on Wall Street in the late 90s, I learned that the hallmark of the late stage of a bull market is when the market “climbs a wall of worry.” In other words, in spite of each piece of bad news that could befall the economy, stock market indices continue to march upwards. In addition to overly accommodating capital markets, several other more pedestrian warning signs were also present by the summer of 2007. The drivers who shuttled me home from the office late at night were increasingly talking about their stock market gains and the houses they were flipping for profit. In-flight magazines contained countless ads for hi-rise luxury condominium developments. Were these signs of a healthy economy where the rising tide lifts all boats, or a warning that the pace of wealth creation was unsustainable?

As 2007 progressed into 2008, the unsustainability of the bubble in asset prices became all-too-apparent, and banks began to fail. From 2008 through 2012, the FDIC closed a staggering 465 banks. To put this in context, in the five years prior to 2008, only ten banks had failed. The bank where I worked didn’t fare much better. Bearing witness, first-hand, to such a precipitous fall from grace taught me an important lesson in the fragility of banks. No matter how storied the name or how solid the marble that adorns its branch entrances, banks exist at the pleasure of investors and depositors’ willingness to extend credit in exchange for levered returns.

The Importance Of Keeping Cash Safe

In response to the Great Depression, President Roosevelt and Congress enacted the Banking Act of 1933, paving the way for the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). When my bank’s share price hit $0.97 in March of 2009, it struck me that much of my cash held at that bank might be in peril. While the FDIC provides deposit insurance, that coverage is limited, and every dollar that you hold above the FDIC insurance cap makes you, in effect, an unsecured creditor of that bank. I realized that in order to keep cash safe, I needed a better solution.

I began researching options for cash. Many banks and brokerage firms offered brokered deposit solutions, where a bank takes your excess deposits and sells them to other banks. The pitch is that this helps you obtain increased FDIC coverage, and so you should feel safe keeping all of your funds at your home bank or brokerage account. But my research revealed several risks inherent in this system, as well as large conflicts of interest. If I was to ensure all my cash was safe and liquid, I needed a better solution.

The best thing I could think of was to open new bank accounts at multiple banks and diversify my holdings by spreading my cash across them. I’d hold each account in my own name, control how much was kept at each bank (to ensure all funds remained below the FDIC limit at each bank), and retain full same-day liquidity at each bank. Unlike brokered deposits, where you might not be fully insured if the broker sells your deposits to a bank where you already hold accounts, and where you could lose access to all your funds if your main bank goes under, with my strategy, I knew that I’d maintain full control, full liquidity, and full FDIC-insurance coverage.

Online Banks And Interest Rates

In 2009, online banking was still relatively nascent, but, it turned out, opening new accounts at online banks was much faster and easier than going into a bank branch. I opened accounts at several of the leading online banks, which also happened to offer higher interest rates than their brick-and-mortar peers, owing to their lower operating cost structure. Much like Amazon had figured out how to sell a textbook cheaper by eschewing physical stores, online banks applied this concept to banking, making it possible to earn a higher interest rate on FDIC-insured savings accounts.

Still, the online banks changed their rates with great frequency, and often when I logged in to check my balances, I found that interest rates had changed. It occurred to me that I could move funds from one bank to another to benefit from yet-higher interest rates. For the next three-and-a-half years, I found myself logging in each month, checking rates, and manually moving funds from bank to bank to obtain the highest yield while keeping all my funds FDIC-insured.

This strategy could be highly lucrative (effectively capturing a pure arbitrage in the market for bank deposits) but also a huge time sink. There had to be a better way. How could I automate this process, so that my money could continue to earn the highest yields possible without my having to lift a finger? And if I could find a way to automate the management of my own cash, why couldn’t I open up this same strategy to anyone else who wanted to simultaneously earn higher yields with less risk?

Online Banks: Conclusion

The result: I created my own automated cash management platform – MaxMyInterest.com. Seven years and three patents later, Max is now the highest-yielding cash management solution in the United States, used by financial advisors at thousands of wealth management firms with more than $1 trillion of assets under management. With a top yield of 1.71%, Max stands above all other cash options offered by banks and brokerage firms – yet, the core premise remains the same as it was back in 2009: deliver the best yields, fully FDIC-insured, with same-day liquidity and no conflicts of interest.

While it may be difficult to envision now, the COVID-19 crisis shall too pass. And, if history does indeed rhyme, in its wake American ingenuity and determination will likely push our economy and financial markets yet higher – although the recovery may be long and uneven. As an investor, your appetite for risk may again increase, too. But for the portion of your portfolio that remains in cash, you should remain as protected and earn as much as possible.

The Rush to Buy Toilet Paper Has All the Hallmarks of a Bank Run

Ellen Corby and James Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life”

For those struggling to unglue themselves from the constant coverage of the novel coronavirus, or for anyone who has visited a grocery store lately, it would be difficult not to notice that a few key staples — including toilet paper — seem to be in short supply.

A recent Bloomberg article by Millie Munshi, Megan Durisin, and Corinne Gretler notes that — while there is plenty of food — the logistics systems used to deliver food throughout the country (and around the world) and the ability to get those products to shelves is strained under a sudden surge of customers stocking up on food and supplies.

It turns out that the problem isn’t supply — there is plenty of toilet paper in the world. The issue is the sudden surge in demand driven by the fear that, with everyone else rushing to buy toilet paper, there won’t be enough for all of us. This, in turn, drives people to buy more than they normally would out of concern for scarcity. In other words, the shortage of available supply isn’t driven by need, it’s driven by fear that others will get to the shelves first — a sort of self-fulfilling fear. President Franklin D. Roosevelt may have summed it up best when, in his first inaugural address, he said the “only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Getting consumers to believe that there will be sufficient supply — even if we can’t be certain that there will be — should be sufficient to restore calm, which in turn would restore sufficient supply on store shelves.

This same underlying dynamic is what drives bank runs, perhaps visualized best by Frank Capra in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Under the Fed’s Reserve requirements, banks are required to hold 10% of checking deposits in-branch, informed by probabalistic models that suggest that such cash reserves are sufficient to meet the needs of customers withdrawing funds on any given day. However, if customers become concerned that their neighbors will rush to the bank to withdraw funds, the desire to withdraw one’s own funds becomes more acute. Fear and panic become self-fulfilling.

The FDIC was instituted in the wake of the Great Depression to help address this concern. By backstopping deposits by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government, depositors no longer needed to worry about whether there would be enough cash in the bank, as even in the unlikely event that a bank were to fail, customers would be fully repaid by the FDIC. The FDIC thus remains a crucial component driving the safety and stability of our banking sector.

There is a notable exception to the protections afforded by the FDIC: it is limited, currently capped at $250,000 per depositor, per account type, per bank charter. This means that if you hold accounts at a bank (checking, savings, CDs) that, in aggregate, exceed $250,000, you may not be fully protected and could suffer loss of principal in the event of bank failure.

There’s an easy way to protect yourself: spread cash across multiple account types (individual, joint) and multiple banks. Services like MaxMyInterest.com were designed to help you do just this, automatically monitoring your accounts and helping keep funds below the FDIC limit at each bank. With a market-leading rate of up to 1.71% APY, Max can also help you earn higher yields on your cash, automatically.

When fear grips markets — whether the market is for toilet paper or bank deposits — the perceived risk of scarcity can lead to a vicious cycle that creates the scarcity that is feared. During these challenging times, the better we’re able to promote rationality over fear, the better we’ll all manage through as a society.

Maximizing Yield in a Near-Zero Rate Environment

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

To some, the global financial crisis of 2008-2010 may seem a distant memory. But it was almost 11 years ago today that the crisis was at its peak, sending some of the largest banks in the country to the brink of insolvency, while others failed entirely. As lending dried up, the broader economy suffered, leading the S&P 500 Index to decline by more than 50%, a dramatic fall that shook the confidence of an entire generation of investors.

Banks that seemed rock-solid were failing, and the larger the bank, the more complex were its exposures and thus the more difficult it was to assess its safety. It was against this backdrop that I began managing my own cash more actively, in search of greater safety and liquidity.

The Role of the FDIC

In the wake of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress enacted the Banking Act of 1933, which paved the way for the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC helped create a level playing field for banks, backstopping depositors with the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government. The FDIC thus conferred upon bank deposits the same credit risk as U.S. Treasurys — up to a cap — giving depositors confidence that their deposits were safe.  

During the Financial Crisis, the FDIC raised the deposit insurance limit to $250,000 per depositor, per account type, per bank charter, and it has remained at this level ever since. By spreading cash across multiple banks, depositors can avail themselves of even more FDIC insurance coverage, making it possible to keep even larger sums of cash fully insured. 

Maximizing Yield and Safety

At the time of the Financial Crisis, I was working as an investment banker at one of the largest banks in the country and witnessed first-hand the risks that depositors faced, particularly if they were holding more than the FDIC insurance limit in cash. I started looking for a way to keep my own cash safe and liquid. 

Brokerage firms were marketing brokered deposit solutions that they claimed increased deposit insurance coverage, but the deeper I dug into these products, the more flaws I found. I determined that these brokered deposit offerings — in which a bank or brokerage firm sells your deposits to other banks to earn a profit while claiming to offer increased FDIC coverage — all suffered from the same fundamental flaw: the funds all flowed through an intermediary institution, so if the institution selling brokered deposits were to fail, depositors might lose access to all their funds until that institution was bailed out. Put differently, these solutions — marketed as a means of reducing risk — were in fact riskiest in precisely the circumstances that they were designed to help you avoid.

I decided that the best way to keep cash safe was much simpler: keep it in my own bank accounts. I could hold these accounts directly in my own name and spread my cash across multiple banks so that even if one bank were to fail, I’d still have access to funds at other banks while the failing bank went through the FDIC resolution process. No brokers. No intermediaries. Just my own cash sitting in my own bank accounts.

The challenge, of course, was monitoring all of these accounts. I found myself logging into multiple bank accounts each month to monitor balances and rates. Accrued interest pushed me over the FDIC limit, and as time went on, I noticed that banks were changing their rates all the time, meaning that I found myself having to constantly monitor rates and shift funds from bank to bank to ensure I was getting the best deal. There had to be a better way.

My experience managing cash during the financial crisis led to the creation of MaxMyInterest, a simple cash management solution that fully automates this cash management strategy, enabling anyone to benefit from increased FDIC insurance coverage and higher yields. Max is now used by advisors at more than a thousand wealth management firms with collectively more than $1 trillion of assets under management. Clients using Max typically earn thousands to tens-of-thousands of dollars of incremental interest income each year, automatically. 

How Max Works

Max works by helping you link your existing brick-and-mortar checking account or brokerage account to your choice of higher-yielding online banks. Each bank is backed by FDIC insurance coverage. By spreading funds across multiple banks, you can increase liquidity and FDIC insurance coverage at the same time. And because online banks have lower operating costs, they tend to pay much higher rates than brick-and-mortar banks or brokerage firms, so you can earn higher returns on your cash at the same time.

Opening new bank accounts is now easier than ever. You can open as many accounts as you like, and unlike credit cards, there’s no impact to your credit rating when you open savings accounts. The Max platform makes it even easier, making it possible to open, link, and begin funding new savings accounts in as little as 60 seconds using Max’s patented Common Application. But even without Max, you can pursue this same strategy of opening and managing a portfolio of bank accounts on your own.

Max simply automates the process for you, monitoring interest rates daily. Each month, Max helps your funds flow whichever of your banks is offering the highest interest rates. So not only do you benefit from increased safety and liquidity, you can earn higher yield, too.

The Fed Funds Rate

When Max launched in 2014, the Fed Funds target rate was 0% to 0.25%. You can think of the Federal Reserve as a bank for banks, and so the Fed Funds rate is effectively the rate at which banks can borrow from (or lend funds to) the Fed overnight. Against that backdrop, the average rate paid on savings accounts across the country was a paltry 0.12%. Still, online banks — owing to their lower operating costs — were able to pay higher yield, approximately 0.90% at the time. As a result, depositors who were astute enough to open savings accounts at online banks could pick up an extra 80 basis points, or 0.80%, of risk-free incremental return, simply by being a bit smarter about where they were holding their cash. 

Beginning in December 2016, the Fed began raising rates in earnest. Online banks raised their rates, too, reaching a peak of 2.25%. The banks supported on the Max platform raised their rates even higher, since Max saves them from having to spend money on advertising or customer acquisition. As a result, the top rate earned by Max members reached 2.72%, a rate that enabled customers to earn more on cash than they might pay on a 7/1 adjustable-rate mortgage!

As the Fed has begun to cut rates, the rates paid by online banks also began to decline, but at a slower pace than the Fed rate cuts. Bankers call the relationship between the change in interest rates paid by banks and the Fed Funds rate the deposit beta. At lower interest rates, online bank deposit betas have tended to average around 0.6, which means that for every 100 bps change in the Fed Funds rate, banks only adjust their rates by 60 bps.

At Max, our data suggest that if the Fed were to lower its target range to 0% to 0.25% (as it was following the Financial Crisis), the online banks will still pay approximately 0.80% to 1.00% on savings accounts. So while interest rates may not be as high as they were in 2019 when the economy was booming, savvy depositors can still earn above-market rates on cash simply by paying more attention to where they keep their funds.  

The Yield Curve

We’re living through extraordinary times. The shock of 9/11 pummeled airlines and impacted the economy, but as a country, we rebounded and rebuilt and enjoyed a long bull run that lasted from the Gulf War through to the Financial Crisis. The Financial Crisis prompted a deeper and more prolonged shock to the economy, but the 11-year bull run that has followed generated tremendous wealth, particularly for those who had liquidity and were able to buy at or near market lows. It’s still too early to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on the markets, but at present, it appears that we’re in for both supply and demand shocks, which could result in a prolonged recession that will require fiscal stimulus, not just monetary stimulus. At present, the most pressing social issues relate to health and safety. Financial recovery cannot begin until our epidemiological prognosis improves.

The Role of Cash

In good times, holding cash may feel like a wasted opportunity, as it often barely keeps pace with inflation. But cash is, as it turns out, a remarkably valuable thing to have on hand when markets turn volatile, both because it gives you the confidence to avoid selling at the wrong time, and also the ability to buy at the right time. While you can’t perfectly time the market, it’s possible to be disciplined about increasing your exposure to the market over time through dollar-cost averaging. Removing emotion from the equation enables you to buy equal amounts when stock prices are rising or falling, smoothing out your cost basis. It might feel counterintuitive, but that’s often the winning strategy, enabling you to follow Warren Buffet’s advice to be “greedy when others are fearful.” 

Those who had sufficient cash reserves to resist the temptation to sell, or who bought the S&P 500 during the scariest days of the Financial Crisis, ultimately experienced a more than 300% gain in the decade that followed. While it can be tempting to let emotion sidetrack your long-term plans, holding a large cash cushion can give you the fortitude to remain a disciplined investor and focus rationally on the long term. And if you’re going to hold a cash cushion, you ought to ensure it’s safe and earning as much as possible. If history is any guide, Max will continue to deliver the highest yields in the market on fully-insured, same-day liquid deposits.

How to Start an Emergency Fund (and Why You Need One)

Image by Gino Crescoli from Pixabay

If you have a financial emergency — an unexpectedly high medical bill, a sudden move across the country, or a job loss — how will you pay for it? Most financial advisors recommend keeping a separate emergency fund that you wall off from your retirement and other lifecycle-related savings accounts. This will allow you to meet urgent funding needs without having to take money from your retirement or educational accounts, which can lead to penalties and tax bills.

It can be difficult to get started with an emergency fund, especially if you’re focused on specific savings goals like buying a house or paying tuition. The best way to make saving a habit is to use behavioral-finance techniques to your advantage. Open an online-savings account at a bank that pays high interest rates, and set up automatic monthly transfers from the main checking or brokerage account where your paycheck gets deposited. That way, you won’t have to think about making a manual deposit. It’s okay if you start with a small amount; the important thing is to be consistent.

While you’re setting up your emergency fund, make sure that you’re earning the highest interest rate possible. This will harness the power of compound interest, which means that the money in your account will earn interest as it sits there, and, if you don’t take it out, will accumulate as the interest goes back into the account to earn even more interest.

Why does this matter? Your emergency fund, by design, is money that you are going to keep on the sidelines and — hopefully — never have to use. Because you are not going to invest it in securities, which are risky, you want to make sure that you can earn as much as possible in interest on your cash in this account. Earning higher interest can help your emergency fund keep pace with inflation.

It’s also important that your emergency fund be kept in an account that’s fully liquid. If you have to access this money, you may need it immediately; you won’t have time to wait the three days that a money market fund will take to get the money back to you. An online savings account solves this problem. You can have the money wired back to your checking account same-day.

Are these accounts safe? Any bank account that is FDIC-insured is backed by the federal government up to $250,000 per depositor, per account type, per institution. If the bank goes under — unlikely, but still possible — the FDIC will return your money up to this limit.

One good way to make sure your emergency fund is FDIC-insured and kept in the highest-rate online-savings accounts possible is to use technology solutions, like MaxMyInterest, to manage it. Max isn’t a bank; it’s software that automatically allocates your funds among high-yielding accounts at online banks, to make sure your money always earns as much as it can safely. You can learn more at MaxMyInterest.com.

Keep Your Bank, Max Your Cash

With Max, earn more on your cash while keeping your existing checking account, or using a brokerage account.

You’d like your cash to earn more — but you don’t want to switch banks.

Enter Max, an intelligent cash management service for intelligent investors. It offers a way to see all your cash at once, while earning you higher yield and obtaining broader FDIC insurance coverage. Max even simplifies tax season, delivering all 1099-INT statements by email in a single password-protected PDF.

Max works with your existing checking account — unless you’d rather open a new checking account or use your brokerage account. Here’s how:

 

Transactional Checking Account

Most investors have a checking account at a bank that they use to pay bills, accept direct deposit of their paychecks or partnership distributions, and manage their household finances. Many Max members link this checking account to Max, because they value Max’s automated optimization that restores their checking account to their pre-set target balance each month..  For example, if you tell Max that you wish to keep $30,000 in checking, but Max finds only $22,000 at the time of your monthly optimization, it will pull $8,000 from savings to bring you back to your target balance of $30,000.  Similarly, if Max finds excess cash sitting in your checking account, it will automatically be swept to your online savings accounts, where it can earn more. We typically advise that clients set their target checking account balance to be slightly higher than their monthly working capital needs, to ensure an ample cash cushion.

 

Separate Checking Account

Some Max members elect to open a new checking account reserved specifically for Max. They move into this account any funds they wish to optimize, link their online savings accounts, and start optimizing. Often they set a low target balance on this checking account, since they don’t plan to use it for any purpose aside from Max.

This setup functions much like a separately managed account, allowing members to cordon off a specific amount of cash to be optimized, separate from the other cash in their portfolios, and not impacted by their daily transactional activity. They can view and manage this cash from the Max dashboard, and when they need to access this cash, they can move it back to the checking account using Max’s Intelligent Funds TransferSM feature, or wire it elsewhere directly from their online bank accounts. It’s easy to open a new checking account online, without visiting a bank branch.

 

Brokerage Account

Many people keep a significant portion of their cash in their brokerage account. Max supports bank and cash management accounts at brokerage houses including Charles Schwab Bank and Fidelity. This strategy takes full advantage of Max to garner additional FDIC coverage and higher interest rates on the cash that’s not currently invested. Most brokerage accounts pay less than 0.1% on your deposits, while the Max average is 1.00%. Historically, investors who chose to maintain cash as dry powder, on hand to deploy when market opportunities presented themselves, typically lost out on the ability to earn interest on these funds. With Max, that’s no longer a problem. You can earn dramatically more while keeping your cash liquid and easily accessible, within reach when it’s time to trade.  Since the average HNW investor is holding 23.7% of his or her portfolio in cash, picking up an extra 0.90% of interest income on cash is equivalent to earning an extra 0.21% across your entire portfolio.

Learn more about setting up your Max account or read our one-page setup guide. Have questions? Ask Max Member Services at member.services@maxmyinterest.com.

Fiduciary Solutions for Financial Advisors: How to Think About Clients’ Cash

Max members are earning about 10 times more on their cash than the national average.

Max members are earning about 10 times more on their cash than the national average.

With the move towards the fiduciary standard across the investment-management landscape, financial advisors increasingly are looking at how they can make sure their clients are getting this standard of advice for the cash portion of their portfolios as well as for their securities. That’s where Max comes in. 

Cash is the one asset class that’s present in every portfolio. But a near-zero-interest-rate environment over the last few years has meant that investors overwhelmingly are earning almost nothing on cash. The national average on savings accounts is 11 basis points — 0.11%. As a fiduciary, an advisor is bound to give advice that’s in a client’s best interest financially. For cash, this means advisors have to seek out ways that clients can earn more interest while remaining insured under the FDIC deposit guarantees.

– Think carefully before using money market funds

Money market funds are a traditional substitute for cash, because they’re designed always to trade at a stable $1 per share. But with new regulations, these funds may now be able to hold onto investors’ money if markets are in turmoil. That means that clients may not be able to get their money out of a money market fund when they need it most. With this lower level of safety, and essentially no yield, money market funds may not be up to the fiduciary standard as a cash equivalent.  

– Use online banks

Online banks don’t have branches, so their cost structure is considerably less than their brick-and-mortar competitors. This imbalance allows them to offer higher interest rates to depositors — above 1%, in some cases, making online banks the highest-yielding places to park cash that clients wish to keep fully liquid. FDIC-insured online banks have the same federal deposit guarantee as any other U.S. bank protected under the program.

– Seek more FDIC coverage

Many investors don’t realize that exceeding the FDIC limits in their accounts means that excess money may not be safe if something happens to the bank. If your clients hold more cash than the FDIC limit — $250,000 per depositor, per account type, per institution — you should consider helping them open accounts at additional banks to gain FDIC coverage for as much of their cash as possible. Keeping cash safe is a prerequisite for fiduciaries.

– How Max can help

It’s possible to get both higher interest on cash and greater FDIC coverage. That’s what Max provides for advisors and their clients through the Max Advisor Dashboard. The average Max client is currently earning more than 1.00% on cash and enjoying FDIC coverage across several institutions. Learn more about how you and your clients can benefit at MaxForAdvisors.com.

When Cash Beats Treasury Bonds

The U.S. Treasury in Washington, D.C. (Source: Treasury.gov)

The U.S. Treasury in Washington, D.C. (Source: Treasury.gov)

Certain truths are thought to be self-evident, like the idea that bonds always pay more than cash in the bank. In today’s interest-rate environment, that’s not true. The highest interest Max members can earn is now 1.05%, while the 5-year U.S. Treasury bond currently yields 1.03% and the 3-year bond yields 0.77%. It’s part of the worldwide flight to high-quality assets after the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union. Many investors are worried that “Brexit” may severely hurt the world’s economy.

What does this mean for investors? Both yields are backed by the U.S. government; the Treasury bond is a government obligation, while Max members are holding their cash within FDIC-insured savings accounts at online banks that are also guaranteed by the government. So the risk profile is the same.

FDIC-insured bank deposits are fully liquid, meaning you can withdraw your money at any time. Bonds, on the other hand, aren’t risk-free; changes in interest rates can cause their prices to rise or fall, introducing what’s known as duration risk. If you buy a bond now and then yields rise, you’re locked in at the old, lower yield, meaning the market will be willing to pay less for your bond and the price will fall.  So unless you hold it to maturity — the entire five years — you’ll lose money.

While buying a Treasury bond means you’re exposed to changes in interest rates, Max members benefit from optimized rates. If the rates on their online savings accounts change, Max will automatically rebalance their funds into higher-earning accounts.

So why would anyone buy Treasury bonds?  Normally, if you’re willing to lock up your money for longer periods of time, you get paid more for taking that duration risk. But not today. At these yields, you can earn more with overnight bank deposits than you can even on a five-year Treasury.  This inefficiency impacts hundreds of billions of dollars of cash held by individual investors.

We built Max to make it easier for individual investors to more effectively manage the cash that they hold, whether it’s in their bank accounts or brokerage accounts.  Max simultaneously delivers higher yield and broader FDIC insurance coverage, with full liquidity, and without switching banks.  

The national average yield on cash held in savings accounts is 0.11%, and many bank and brokerage accounts pay even less. If you’d like to earn more on your cash, or are seeking broader FDIC insurance coverage, or want to keep your funds fully liquid and don’t want to take the risk of investing in Treasurys when it seems like yields have nowhere to go but up (and thus the value of those bonds have nowhere to go but down), keeping cash in high-yielding online savings accounts might be the answer for you.

You can learn more about Max by visiting www.MaxMyInterest.com.