WSJ: Rich Pulling Cash from Banks
The Wall Street Journal says, "Rich Customers Pull Money From Banks Offering Paltry Interest Rates." The article tells us, "Wealthy savers are starting to take their cash out of bank accounts in search of higher yields. Big banks are still paying paltry interest on checking and savings accounts despite the Federal Reserve's steepest rate increases in decades. Their wealth-management customers are done waiting: They are moving the extra savings they accumulated during the pandemic into products whose rates have more closely tracked the Fed. The typical savings account is paying a 0.33% interest rate, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Treasury notes, money-market funds and brokered certificates of deposit, meanwhile, are all paying between 4% and 5%." They quote Jason Goldberg of Barclays PLC, "Every time the Fed hikes, the opportunity cost of leaving idle cash in low-yielding accounts increases. You're seeing consumers who have extra cash being proactive with it." The Journal piece explains, "The divergence was on display in Bank of America Corp.'s fourth-quarter earnings earlier this month. Deposits at the bank's wealth unit, which includes Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, fell 17% in 2022 to $324 billion. Deposits in the consumer unit fell 0.6% to $1 trillion. Affluent customers moved money into money-market funds and Treasurys, Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said on a call with analysts, while the typical consumer-banking customer simply had less extra money to make such investments. The bank paid just 0.06% on consumer deposits in the fourth quarter and 0.88% on U.S. interest-bearing deposits across all businesses." It adds, "The flight of wealth deposits poses a big business issue for firms such as Charles Schwab Corp., which relies on the extra cash that investors leave in their accounts for a large part of its revenue. The biggest U.S. banks have a wider range of businesses. They also accumulated so many extra deposits at the start of the pandemic that losing some isn't a huge problem. Still, they are starting to try to stem outflows by offering higher interest rates to their wealthy clientele. Wells Fargo & Co.'s wealth-management deposits dropped by 28% to $139 billion in 2022 from a year earlier. The bank's consumer deposits were down 3%. At JPMorgan Chase & Co., deposits fell 17% in its asset- and wealth-management unit and 1% in consumer banking."
