Despite contracting in banks I admit I know nothing about personal finance.
I've been looking at a number of fixed term deposit bank accounts. I've noticed at some banks that they pay *radically* different interest rates depending on the currency involved.
E.g. for a 12 month deposit:
10,000 sterling = 5.25%
25,000 USD = 2.4%
25,000 EUR = 2.43%
100000 SA Rand = 10.4%
What's the catch ? Maybe this is a dumb question but wouldn't all the US Dollar customers convert their savings to Rand and benefit from a much better return ?? I've also seen the NZ $ pays highly.
All I could speculate is that the banks believe the NZ$ and Rand etc are going to fall over the following 12 months and that a deposit + 10% isn't really going to deliver a genuine 10% gain as the currency will have less value ?
Alter.e
