[📌 Update November 2022: Huntington Bank raised the rate on their 14 month promotional CD (certificate of deposit) this month following the FED’s latest 0.75% rate hike on November 2nd. That account now provides an APY (annual percentage yield) of 4.08%. This is up from just 2.28% last month and up from 0.50% APY since it launched. See all of Huntington Bank’s CD rates below.]

Originally founded as The Huntington National Bank in 1866 in Columbus, Ohio, Huntington Bank has maintained its regional status over the years despite several mergers and acquisitions and hefty asset growth.

Today, Huntington Bank is the 28th largest U.S. bank by asset size with over $113.8 billion in assets and $90.7 billion in deposits.

The regional bank serves seven states in the Midwest:

• Ohio,
• Illinois,
• Indiana,
• Kentucky,
• Michigan,
• Pennsylvania,
• and West Virginia.

The holding company of which Huntington Bank is the banking subsidiary is called Huntington Bancshares. This entity trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker HBAN.

If you’re a consumer looking to earn a good rate of return on the money you deposit, this bank leaves much to be desired.

Its deposit products—CD and money market accounts, specifically—are far from competitive and even lag the national average currently.

That said, the bank has good branch and service accessibility and lets you waive account fees fairly easily, so if you can look past low APYs, there are some advantages.

In this review we’ll be looking at Huntington Bank’s CD Rates and Relationship Money market account.

Huntington Bank CD Rates + Account Details

Huntington Bank’s deposit products are insured by the FDIC up to $250k per depositor or $500k on joint accounts.

Their CD rates remain largely uncompetitive at the moment other than their 14 month promotional CD. This is on par with what we see at many large national banks today, such as Bank of America or Wells Fargo, who have very little incentive to attract new savers with high returns even as the FED continues to raise rates.

We should note that following the most recent rate hike by the FED on November 2nd, even these large banks are now slowly starting to add one or two promotional certificates of deposits that come with higher yields to their overall product suite.

All Huntington Bank certificates of deposit require a minimum opening deposit of $1,000.

Promotional CD Rates

This 14 month promotional CD is Huntington Bank’s most competitive CD account. They also offer a promotional 425 day CD for jumbo accounts with deposits of $100,000 or more. That product also earns 4.08% APY.

Standard CD Rates

To give these yields (above) some context, the current national average on a 12 month CD and a 60 month CD sit at just 0.71% APY and 0.83% APY, respectively, according to FDIC data.

Compounding and Paying Interest

Interest is compounded daily and credited either monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually, or at maturity. You get to choose the frequency.

Huntington Bank offers Jumbo CDs and IRA CDs as well however these all come with the same yields shown above. Certificates with balances of $100,000 are considered to be Jumbo CDs. This bank has also offered promotional deposits in the past, but is not running any at this time.

Early Withdrawal Penalties

If you need access to your funds prior to the maturity date of your Huntington Bank CD you will incur the following penalties:

• For terms of 91 days or less, you will owe the full term of your account in simple interest.
• For terms of 92 days to 1 year, the penalty is 3 months interest.
• For terms of 1 year to 18 months, the penalty is 6 months interest.
• Finally, for terms of more than 18 months, the penalty is 12 months interest.

The minimum early withdrawal penalty is 7 days interest.

Grace Period

There is a standard grace period of 10 days for Huntington Bank CDs in which you can withdraw or add funds to your deposit. All accounts are automatically renewable unless you specifically request otherwise except for accounts used for public funds or those with opening balances of $100,000 or more with a term of less than one month. These are not eligible for automatic renewal.

Huntington Bank Relationship Money Market Account Rate + Details

A Huntington Bank Relationship Money Market account now offers competitive yields but also comes with a significantly steeper minimum deposit requirement of $25,000.

The precise interest rate you’ll earn, however, depends on your “relationship” with the bank. And by this, they mean which other accounts you hold with them.

The rate table below shows the APY you’ll earn based on the type of account(s) you hold.

Money Market Rates

To put these yields in perspective the current national average for a money market account with a balance of less than $100,000 is 0.23% APY.

That said, there are a number of FDIC-insured online banks with savings accounts and/or money market accounts with rates above 3.50% APY and minimum balance requirements of less than $1,000.

Interest is compounded monthly and credited monthly.

Avoid Fees

These accounts have the potential to ding you $25/month in maintenance fees. Here’s how to avoid that:

1. Maintain an average daily balance of at least $25,000 (which is also the only way to earn dividends on your balance).
2. Maintain either a Huntington Perks Checking or Huntington Platinum Perks Checking account.

A Huntington Bank money market account does have check-writing capabilities, but their checking accounts do.

Huntington Bank Fee Schedule

Checks are also available but the cost per box varies based on design.

If you plan on using a Huntington Bank ATM card you’ll want to note that Huntington Bank charges a $3 fee for each out of network cash withdrawal on top of whatever the ATM owner charges.

Huntington Bank Account Features + Customer Sentiment

One of the noteworthy account features across many Huntington Bank accounts is the 24-Hour Grace, which is basically built-in overdraft protection.

This protection feature will give you 24 hours to make a deposit to bring your balance positive in the event of an overdraft. It is applied for free to all checking, savings, and money market accounts with Huntington Bank.

Relationship rate benefits take certain decent Huntington Bank products—like savings and money market accounts—and make them better. So if you intend to join Huntington, know that you will get the most out of this membership if you have multiple accounts with the bank.

This bank hasn’t received the best ratings from other review sites online with scores ranging between 1.5 (ConsumerAffairs) and 3.5 (WalletHub) stars. That said, the majority of the dis-satisfaction tends to reside on the loan site with mortgage and auto loan clients being the most vocal about their negative experiences.

The Huntington Bank app has a 4-star rating on Google Play and a 4.8-star rating on the App Store. This app has been praised for being comprehensive and having unique features that you don’t always see in a banking app.

You can reach customer service in a number of ways. You can call (800) 480-2265 from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM ET, live chat with a representative through the Huntington website, tweet @AskHuntington, or even direct message the bank on Facebook.

Customer service isn’t the only important aspect of overall banking experience. As mentioned, Huntington Bank has great accessibility. There are over 800 Huntington Bank branches and 1,400 ATMs across Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, and this bank does a good job of placing its branches strategically for maximum convenience. Case in point, if you live in the Midwest, you’ve probably even seen a Huntington Bank hub in your local grocery store.

Huntington Bank customers can make ATM and mobile deposits up to midnight with All Day Deposit.

[📌 Update November, 2022: Synchrony Bank’s CD (certificate of deposit) rates continue their ascent following the latest 0.75% rate hike by the FED on November 2nd. They also added a 15 month promotional CD in October that features a yield of 4.21% APY (annual percentage yield). See all of Synchrony Bank’s CD rates below.]

Synchrony Bank is an ultra-convenient, online-only bank that you’ve probably seen advertised in various places online over the years.

More than just the result of good marketing, Synchrony has gained a great deal of recognition and praise for regularly having some of the best rates on the market across their product suite. The likes of Nerdwallet, MyBankTracker, and Bankrate have awarded this bank for having the best CD and savings accounts for multiple years.

This bank traces its history all the way back to 1932 when General Electric founded the GE Contracts Corporation for financing appliance purchases. This became the General Electric Capital Corporation or GE Capital in 1943. GE Capital remained in operation for more than a half century before being spun off and rebranded as Synchrony Bank on June 2, 2014.

Synchrony Bank’s current deposit products feature above average rates on a wide range of variable and fixed rate accounts. Synchrony Bank doesn’t offer a checking account at this time however, therefore may not meet all of your banking needs.

Synchrony Bank has a high yield savings account, CDs, IRA CDs, a money market account, and IRA money market accounts in its current lineup. These are all competitive, interest-bearing accounts that can be opened and managed digitally. This can be done online or with the highly-rated MySynchrony mobile app(s) for Apple or Android devices.

All of Synchrony Bank’s deposit products are federally insured by the FDIC up to $250,000 per depositor or $500,000 for joint accounts.

Below is our full review of Synchrony Bank’s deposit products.

Synchrony Bank CD Rates + Account Details

Synchrony Bank has plenty of CD terms to choose from with competitive rates across the board. All certificates of deposit at Synchrony Bank require a minimum opening deposit of $2,000. Like all other savings accounts with Synchrony, interest is compounded daily and credited monthly.

CD Rates

To put these offers in perspective the current national average for a 12 month CD and a 60 month CD sit at just 0.71% and 0.83% APY, respectively, according to recent FDIC data.

15 Day Best Rate Guarantee

A 15-day Best Rate Guarantee is applied to all Synchrony bank CDs. This means that if you open a CD and fund it sufficiently within 15 calendar days and the posted rate then becomes higher than what you locked into, the new higher rate will be applied to your account. Don’t underestimate the value of this free insurance during periods of high rate fluctuation.

📌 Please Note – APY GUY reader Richard reached out to us to clarify the 15 day rule. As per his experience, Synchrony Bank only applies the higher yield if the CD is unfunded when their rates change. Once funded the CD rate is locked-in. He noted that he had purchased a CD and funded it on the same day, then 6 days later Synchrony Bank raised their CD rates, however, his CD was not eligible for the new rate. We’ve reached out to Synchrony Bank for clarification and will post the response here.

Early Withdrawal Penalties & Grace Period

Early withdrawal penalties will be charged when you withdraw funds after opening an account but before it reaches maturity or after the 10 day grace period is up following maturity. This will be 90 days’ simple interest for terms of 12 months or less, 180 days’ simple interest for terms between 12 and 48 months, and 365 days’ simple interest for terms of 48 months or more.

CDs automatically renew at maturity and have a grace period of 10 days in which you can deposit or add funds freely.

Opening an Account

As is the case with many digital banks, just about anyone can open a deposit account with Synchrony Bank.

To open an account, you must be a U.S. citizen at or above the age of 18, have a valid Social Security number, phone number, and mailing address within the United States.

To get started, visit the Synchrony Bank website and select “Open Account.”

You will first be asked whether or not this is your first Synchrony Bank account, then you will be provided with a form to fill out.

The final step, after signing a couple of agreements and opting in to online access, will be to fund your account. This can be done in a few different ways.

Funding your Deposit Account

Fund your Synchrony Bank savings accounts via:

• ACH transfer from an external account,
• transfer from a Synchrony account,
• mobile check deposit,
• direct deposit from a third party,
• wire transfer, or
• personal check mailed to: Synchrony Bank, PO Box 105972, Atlanta, GA 30348-5972

First Tech Federal Credit Union currently has a little over 650,000 members and controls nearly $15 billion in total assets. This credit union, founded in Oregon in 1952 by employees of Tektronix and Hewlett-Packard, was created to meet the specific needs of people who worked in the technology sector and their families. 

Today, membership with this credit union is open to many technology employees in the state of Oregon. Plus, there are also ways for those who do not meet employment or geographical requirements to join. If you’re wondering whether you should become a member of this credit union and open a CD account, you can find the answers in this article.

Certificates of Deposit

First Tech offers both traditional and Bump Up certificates of deposit with regular and jumbo versions of each. We’ll cover both.

Standard CDs

Standard Share Certificates are available in term lengths of 6 to 60 months. These require an opening deposit and a minimum balance of at least $500 for regular CDs and $50,000 for jumbo CDs. Both of these are pretty average for credit union certificates. Your rate is determined by your term length and not by your balance. See the current interest rates below.

Regular and Jumbo Standard CD Rates

To put these yields into perspective, the national average for a 6 month CD is 0.42%, for a 1 year CD is 0.71%, for a 2 year CD is 0.77%, and for a 5 year CD is 0.83%, according to FDIC data. These rates have been creeping up in the past few months after reaching some record lows.

That said, many online banks and credit unions are offering more competitive interest rates on CD accounts. Synchrony Bank is paying up to 4.01% and PenFed Credit Union up to 3.85%.

Jumbo is a little better but still does not compete with the top accounts, especially considering the balance required. Note that there are also not as many term options with First Tech as there are with many other banks and credit unions.

Compound Interest

Interest is compounded and credited monthly back into your account. If you wish to withdraw dividends as a source of regular income, you can do so without incurring an early withdrawal penalty by indicating that you would like to cash interest out and linking an account for this.

Early Withdrawal Fees

Otherwise, if you remove funds before your account matures, you will be subject to the following early withdrawal fees: 

• Early withdrawal from an account that has been open for less than six days will incur a penalty equal to seven days’ interest
• Early withdrawal from a term of one year or less will incur the Federal Reserve Board Regulation D penalty, which is currently no penalty
• Early withdrawal from a term of between one and two years will incur a penalty equal to 180 days’ interest
• Early withdrawal from a term of greater than two years will incur a penalty equal to 270 days’ interest.

Except for the 12-month penalty, these are fairly standard. To avoid these fees, make changes or withdrawals during the grace period of 10 days. This starts immediately after your account matures. 

All share certificates automatically renew at the same term when they reach maturity. If you do not wish to renew your account, make a request to the credit union either prior to the maturity date or during the grace period. You will receive 30 days’ notice when your account is about to mature.

Funding Your Account

To fund this account, you can: 

• Schedule an internal transfer from a checking or savings account
• Schedule an external ACH transfer from another checking or savings account
• Link a direct deposit source
• Send a paper check to: 

PO Box 2100

Beaverton, OR 97075-2100

. There is no limit to how much you can deposit into a certificate.

All traditional and bump up CD accounts are federally insured by the NCUA up to $250,000 per depositor.

Bump Up CDs

Bump Up CDs are available in term lengths of 13 to 36 months. These also require a minimum deposit of $500 for the regular accounts and $50,000 for jumbo accounts.

Bump Up CD Rates

As a bump-rate certificate, this account gives you more flexibility to make changes than a traditional CD. You have the option to make between one and three additional deposits into the account after opening. 

How many bump ups and deposits you’re permitted to make depends on your term length. If your term is less than 24 months (13 months), you are allowed one of each. If your term is greater than or equal to 24 months (24 or 36 months), you are allowed to make one rate adjustment and one deposit every 12 months until maturity. By bumping up your rate, you can take advantage of rate increases that occur after you open an account and lock into the new rate until your next bump up or maturity. 

These rate adjustments and deposits do not cost you anything and have no impact on your term length. Nothing happens if you don’t exercise these options, but you’ll be earning a lower interest rate than you would with a standard CD.

Consumer Sentiment & Reviews

Customer sentiment for First Tech Federal Credit Union is on the low end of average. There are a lot of consumers out there with valid complaints, and these don’t seem to be specific to a certain product category. People are reporting negative experiences with personal loans, credit cards, savings accounts, and more. 

Poor customer service, high fees, and issues applying for accounts and products are common themes. Many compare the customer experience with First Tech with the customer experience you’d be likely to receive with a big bank.

But of course, there are also many happy customers who are maybe a little less vocal. They have had positive relationships with First Tech for years and say that the credit union is easy to work with and customer care is helpful and quick to resolve issues. It seems to really depend 

There are over 30 different First Tech Federal Credit Union branch locations in eight different U.S. States. These are:

• California
• Colorado
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Massachusetts
• Oregon 
• Texas
• Washington

In addition, First Tech is part of a network of 5,600 co-op branches shared with other credit unions that you can visit to manage your accounts. As a member, you will be able to use more than 30,000 ATMs within the First Tech co-op network without paying transaction fees. To find a branch or ATM near you, use this link.

The First Tech Federal Credit Union app performs really well, especially for a financial app. It has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars in Google Play with over 10,000 reviews and 4.7 out of 5 stars in the App Store with over 35,000 reviews. 

This is a pretty standard banking app in terms of the functionalities and interface, but it runs smoothly for most people.

To get in touch with customer service, you have a few options. You can call the general inquiries line at 855-855-8805 any day, any time. This 24/7 phone line can help with any question you may have. You can also log into your account and send a secure message through the online portal if you don’t mind waiting for a bit for a response. And if you live near a branch, you can always walk in or schedule an appointment to speak with a banker. Virtual appointments are also available if this isn’t an option for you.

How to Become a Member

There are four different ways to qualify for membership with First Tech Federal Credit Union. The first is to be married, related to, or living with someone who is already a member. 

The second is to be related to or yourself be employed by a partner company or the State of Oregon. These are not limited to technology corporations, though there are many of these on the list. Schools, retail businesses, and nonprofits are also included. For example, employees of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation can join. You can see a complete list of partner or sponsor companies here.

The third way to be eligible is by working–for any company–or living in Lane County, Oregon. If you can provide proof of employment or residence, you’re in.

The fourth and final way, if none of the above work for you, is to become a member of the Computer History Museum or Financial Fitness Association. Both of these organizations offer membership to the general public. Don’t worry if you don’t live anywhere near these places. You can apply online. 

The Computer History Museum, located in Mountain View, California, offers annual membership for as low as $15. You can choose how much to pay. The Financial Fitness Association is a nonprofit that supports members in learning about money management to improve their financial well-being. Membership is just $8 for one year. As long as you remain a member with one of these organizations, you can continue using First Tech Federal products.

If you’re not sure if you qualify, you can always call customer service for help with your application.

You can submit an application online using this link or in person at any branch location. You’ll be asked the standard personal and security questions before verifying your identity. The process should not take more than five minutes and most users don’t have any issues getting set up. 

Then, you will be required to open a Membership Savings account and deposit at least $5 to become a member. This account earns an interest rate of 0.05% on all balances and charges no monthly maintenance fee.

Final Thoughts

First Tech Federal Credit Union CDs are not bad and anyone can become a member, making this a good option if you want to join an established credit union and start saving. Though the interest rates could be better, the deposit minimums and early withdrawal penalties are pretty low, so you might find these certificates to be more accessible than others.

That said, this credit union isn’t perfect. Keep shopping around if you’re after the best interest rates, you don’t want to join a credit union, you’re wary of negative reviews, or you don’t see the type of CD or term length you’re looking for. Check out our other CD reviews to find what you’re looking for.