ING get support from Dutch Govt.

It all depends on your attitude to risk.

And on your attitude to return. You get no more than 6% with ING over

1 year. That's 4.8% after basic rate tax, or just 3.6% after higher rate tax. Since the RPI is currently running at 5.0% the RPIX at 5.5%, and your own personal rate quite likely higher than that, your savings will be losing their purchasing power every day they are held. The question therefore is whether to have savings at all or whether they would be better converted into plasma TVs, home extensions and a Porsche before it's too late to buy anything.

It all depends on your attitude to risk.

And on your attitude to return. You get no more than 6% with ING over

1 year. That's 4.8% after basic rate tax, or just 3.6% after higher rate tax. Since the RPI is currently running at 5.0% the RPIX at 5.5%, and your own personal rate quite likely higher than that, your savings will be losing their purchasing power every day they are held. The question therefore is whether to have savings at all or whether they would be better converted into plasma TVs, home extensions and a Porsche before it's too late to buy anything.

All our savings are in my wife's name. As a non-taxpayer she gets the interest gross so its marginally advantageous for us to keep our money in a high interest savings account!

Ret.

I see some BS's are offering 7%-ish fixed for 9-12 month term, which sounds good if the bank rate is falling. But again, less tax.

Anything better than index-linked savings certs to move one's ING deposit into at present?

Lucky you!

In message , DvdP wrote

Can they afford to bail out the 85 million customers?

If it is a UK registered bank, the government can use their Northern Rock powers to nationalise the bank and move the deposit accounts elsewhere, as they did with Bradford & Bingley, Kaupthing and Heritable. ING isn't UK registered, so that isn't an option, so you will have to wait for the FSCS to pay up, as is happening with Icesave. I guess that's OK for fixed rate bonds where you are expecting the money to be tied up for a while anyway, but not for instant access accounts where you expect to be able to get the money quickly in case of emergency, or to use it for Christmas shopping.

That seems the somewhat disquieting question. So far, I couldn't find a clear answer. Its very nice to increase the guarantee on deposit from 20.000 to 100.000 to 'restore confidence', but if there's a reasonable suspicion that (more-or-less) politically appointed directors behaved like drunken sailors when times were good, than coming up with clear answers would be very nice too...