Which bank will give you 5.2% on your savings?

British savings accounts have been blown out of the water by the arrival of a new internet-only account which pays 5.2% and guarantees interest will exceed the Bank of England base rate (currently 4.75%) by at least 0.25 percentage points until October 2009. What is this account? And is it really as good as it sounds?

British savings accounts have been blown out of the water by the arrival of a new internet-only account which pays 5.2% and guarantees interest will exceed the Bank of England base rate (currently 4.75%) by at least 0.25 percentage points until October 2009. From then on the interest will be at the base rate or above until 1 October 2011, making it the longest guarantee of its kind in the UK. So what is this account called?

It's IceSave, the new savings account from Iceland's Landsbanki. It sounds great, but the amazing thing is that it really is great. IceSave seems to be using none of the tricks its new competitors do to nudge themselves to the top of best-buy tables. There are no introductory bonus rates, no forfeits for withdrawals and no upper limits on the sum you can pay in each month. You can deposit any sum up to £1m. The only thing to watch out for is letting your balance fall below £250: Landsbanki clearly don't want very small accounts, so if you have less than that, they'll pay you only 0.5% in interest.

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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.