ING Direct: Is Orange the Color of the Future?
Written: Feb 12 '09 (Updated Feb 14 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Competitive rates, modern website, many options, monthly interest distributions
Cons: Lag time, no checking account option
The Bottom Line: I would recommend checking out ING Direct's rates and seeing if it's worth it to move your funds into one of their accounts. You may make some additional money!
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| jetbluefan1's Full Review: ING Direct |
I had heard a lot about ING - its modernity, its simplicity, and its competitiveness. A simple look at Bankrate.com had ING Direct as one of the most competitive banking institutions in the nation. Consistently, I saw that its CD rates and savings account rates were among the top in its group. And best of all, ING is FDIC-insured.
ING is the parent of Sharebuilder, an online brokerage firm which I use to trade public stock. When logging into my ING Direct account, I can choose to view my Sharebuilder account as well. However, there is no feature which allows me to transfer money directly between the two accounts. It would be nice to take matured CD's and automatically put those funds into my Sharebuilder account, or to take shares which I sell or dividends which I earn and automatically put them in CD's. Nonetheless, ING does not offer this option.
Currently, I only have certificates of deposit with ING. When first opening a CD, I had to prove my checking account number. Small amounts of money were deposited into my checking account, and I had to confirm these amounts online. From there, it took several days to transfer money between my checking account and my ING account. And every time I put more money in a CD, it takes a few days for the money to transfer. While I find the lag time to be unacceptable, the rate is guaranteed based upon the day which I request the fund transfer - not the day the funds are made available.
ING offers a variety of CD's from 6 months up to five years. The rate does rise as the term of the CD increases, but the difference in the rate is not as significant as competing banks. If you are looking for creating a tiered CD portfolio, ING may not be for you. However, it is rather good if you are looking for simpler CD investments.
Though I do not use any of the other services, I checked them out and considered transferring my savings account funds into them. Electronic Orange (checking-account hybrid) offers tiered interest rates depending on the value of the account, as well as a debit card option and bill pay option. The other option - the Orange Savings account - is a straightforward savings account with a rather competitive interest rate. The downside is that ING does not offer a traditional checking account. Therefore, to transfer money into any ING account, one must have a checking account at another institution. This is inconvenient since ING is virtually an online-only bank, and it has few branches or ATM's.
One upside to ING's CD's is that you are given the option to have interest paid monthly or annually. As such, you can choose to have earned interest deposited into your outside checking account monthly. I don't know of any other institution that does this.
Overall, I recommend checking out ING Direct and seeing if it's a fit for you.
Recommended:
Yes
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