Max was designed to be the highest-yielding, safest, most liquid way to manage your cash.
With Max, all your cash remains in your own bank accounts, held directly in your own name, so you can view all your balances and access your funds directly whenever you want. Max also monitors interest rates daily and helps you ensure your cash is always in the highest-yielding accounts each month so you can keep earning more.
With the Max Common Application, Max members can sign up for multiple high-yield savings accounts in less time than it takes to open a single online bank account. Having multiple accounts makes it easy to take advantage of the best rates, even as rates change. And for those with large sums of money, spreading cash across multiple bank accounts helps you maximize your FDIC insurance coverage, too.
How do Max’s rates compare with other options?
Most brick-and-mortar banks pay very little in interest, especially these days. Online banks have lower costs, so they can afford higher rates. According to the FDIC, the average rate paid on a savings account nationwide was just 0.06% (as of September 20, 2021). Most brokerage accounts and money market funds are even worse, typically yielding as little as 0.01%. For current rates, see here.
By supplementing your existing brick-and-mortar bank with high-yield savings accounts, Max can help you earn significantly more on your cash while keeping it FDIC-insured.
Max is not a bank and does not set interest rates. Instead, Max creates a dynamic environment in which banks can compete for your deposits by offering you the best rates. As a result, you can earn significantly more with Max than you would in a typical bank or brokerage account.
What if I already have online savings accounts?
Several banks offer preferential rates exclusively for Max members. So even if you already bank online, Max can help you earn even higher rates than you could get on your own.
Max’s monthly optimization feature helps boost your earnings even further. Back-testing Max’s strategy demonstrated that in 2020, a Max member with $250,000 of cash would have earned 0.22% more by using Max than if they had kept all their money in a single high-yield savings account at a leading online bank*. Even after taking into account Max’s membership which costs 4 basis points (0.04%) per quarter, Max outperformed the online banks by 0.14%.
Beyond preferential interest rates, many of the banks on the Max platform also offer preferred terms for Max members, such as higher daily transfer limits and no minimum balance requirements. Max makes it easy to manage all your accounts via a single username and password. And come tax time, you can request a Consolidated Tax Report with one click. Max will gather the 1099-INT statements for all of your savings accounts and send them to you by email in a single password-protected PDF, making tax time a breeze!
* The back-testing study compared Max to nationally advertised high-yield savings accounts at the following online banks: Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Ally Bank, Barclays, and Capital One.