How to find the best-paying savings accounts

It is more than a month since the Bank of England raised the base rate, but most big banks are yet to pass on the rise to long-suffering savers. Chasing the best-paying accounts every six to 12 months may seem hard work, but if you have lots of cash on deposit, you probably should.

It is more than a month since the Bank of England raised the base rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.75%, but most big banks are yet to pass on the rise to long-suffering savers. Chasing the best-paying accounts every six to 12 months may seem hard work, but if you have lots of cash on deposit, you probably should.

To stay on top, you need to be aware of the banks' tricks and understand quoted rates so that you are comparing like with like. Banks quote one of two different interest rates, the gross rate and the AER, or Annual Equivalent Rate. The gross rate is the flat rate of interest that's actually paid; the AER includes interest on the interest, which shows what you would get over a year if you put your money into the account and left it there.

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.