Paying for bank accounts: how negative interest rates will cost you

If you have any money in a bank account, negative interest rates mean you may have to get used to paying for the privilege, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

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We may have to all get used to paying for our bank accounts

How low can interest rates go? Base rates in Switzerland and Denmark are negative. Several countries are seeing their debt trading on negative yields (see this column from last week on what this means). And there is increasing conjecture that this is just the beginning.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.