British savers losing out by making simple banking mistake

The decision to primarily use a current account could see Britons lose out on interest which could top six per cent.

The best easy access rate pays 5.05 per cent from Paragon Bank.

NS&I also has the top one-year fixed rate at 6.2 per cent.

However, a third of UK savers also admitted to never comparing the rate on their savings accounts to rival offers.

Three-in-10 savers never even check what rates are with their own bank or building society.

Nine per cent also opted not to review their accounts for a year or more.

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But the polling, which was released to mark UK Savings Week 2023, laid bare interesting statistics about how much Britons keep in their pockets.

The average amount set aside by British savers totalled £21,840.

However, more than half of people have less than £12,000 and one-in-seven adults have no savings at all.

Robin Fieth, chief executive of the BSA, said: “As savings rates have been increasing over recent months, shopping around can now make a sizeable difference to the returns available.”

The Financial Conduct Authority recently introduced a new consumer duty requiring firms to put customers at the heart of what they do.

The decision includes designing their products and dealing with consumers.

The regulator put forward a 14-point action plan to make sure banks and building societies are passing on interest rate rises appropriately to savers.

The FCA warned nine of the biggest savings providers only passed through 28 per cent of the base interest rate rise on average between January 2022 to May 2023.

Interest rates have been hiked by the Bank of England 14 times since December 2021, as the figure peaked at 5.25 per cent earlier this month.