Comparison Financial products
Current account, savings account or certificate: where your money actually sits
Three places a bank will hold your money, and the single difference between them that decides whether you can reach it on the day you need it.
| Deposit accounts | Can you take it out today? | Is the return fixed? | What leaving early costs | Minimum balance | What it is built for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current account Any licensed bank | Yes. Card, transfer or counter, on demand. | There is usually no return at all. | Nothing. There is nothing to leave. | Often a stated minimum, and a monthly fee below it. | Money moving through: salary in, rent and bills out. |
| Savings account Any licensed bank | Yes, though some accounts limit free withdrawals per month. | No. The bank sets a variable rate and can change it. | Nothing, beyond losing that period of accrued return. | Usually a minimum to earn the advertised rate. | Money you may need at short notice, such as an emergency fund. |
| Term deposit or savings certificate Any licensed bank | No. The money is committed for a stated term. | Yes. Fixed on the day you open it, for the whole term. | A penalty. Typically some or all of the return earned so far. | A minimum opening amount rather than a running balance. | Money you have decided not to touch for a known period. |
What’s being compared?
A bank will hold your money in one of three shapes, and almost every product name you meet on a branch poster or in an app is a version of one of them. They differ on a single question, and everything else follows from it: how long you have agreed not to touch the money.
A current account assumes the answer is zero. It exists so money can move through it, and because the bank cannot lend money that might leave tomorrow, it usually pays nothing for holding it.
A savings account assumes the answer is a while, without saying how long. The money stays available, so the bank pays something for it, and because you never committed to a period, the bank never committed to a rate. It can move the rate whenever it likes.
A term deposit, sold across the region as a certificate, is the answer stated out loud. You name a period, the bank names a rate, and both of you are held to it. That is the whole trade: you give up access, and in exchange the rate stops being the bank’s decision.
Read the table above with that in mind. It is one question asked five ways.
Why do the differences matter?
Because the only thing being traded across the three rows is the right to change your mind, and each row prices it differently.
A current account charges the whole return for total freedom. A savings account returns most of the freedom and pays a rate the bank can move whenever it likes. A certificate pays a rate nobody can move and takes the freedom away for the length of the term. No row gives both, and any product that appears to is doing it with a condition further down the page.
A fixed rate is only fixed against the thing it is quoted in. Committing for a year is two bets at once: that rates will not rise while you are locked in, and that prices will not rise faster than the rate does. The certificate can pay exactly what it promised and still leave the money buying less at the end of the term than at the start, and the saver who is committed cannot respond to either while the term runs. That is the cost of the fix, and it is never printed beside the rate.
The early-exit penalty is what makes the commitment real. Without it a certificate would be a savings account with a better rate, and it is not. Most terms take back some or all of the profit accrued rather than touching the original amount, so leaving early usually returns the money roughly as it went in. The rate was never the price of the certificate. Giving up the ability to act was.
And an emergency does not check which row your money is in. The reason this table matters more than it looks is that the wrong row is only discovered on the day the money is needed, which is the one day the answer cannot be changed. That is a different question from which rate is highest, and it is the one the emergency-fund rule is really about.
What to watch for
The variable rate is variable in both directions. A savings account’s advertised rate is a rate today, not a promise. Nothing in the account stops the bank lowering it the month after you open it, and nothing announces it either.
A minimum balance is usually a fee, not a rule. Falling below it rarely closes the account. It more often turns the rate off, charges a monthly amount, or both, which is how an account that pays a return becomes an account that costs one.
Breaking a certificate early is priced, and the price is the return. Most early-exit terms take back some or all of the profit accrued rather than touching the original amount, so the money comes back roughly as it went in. That is a real cost on a fund whose entire purpose is being available in an emergency.
Two accounts of the same kind are not the same product. This table compares kinds, which is the part that holds still. The rate, the fee schedule and the withdrawal limits belong to a specific bank on a specific day, and they are printed on the account agreement rather than on a comparison page.
How we compared
This compares kinds of deposit account rather than named products at named banks, and it does that deliberately. Product terms change monthly in every market this desk covers, no regulator in those markets publishes a machine-readable feed of them, and a table of rates the desk cannot re-verify on a schedule goes stale silently. Every cell here is a structural property of the account type, which is the part that does not change and the part a reader can check against their own account agreement in a minute. Nobody paid to appear on this page, and no bank is named on it.