Savings popular - despite high mortgages and low savings rates

- We are seeing an enormous increase in interest in saving in a savings account right now, says Christina Sahlberg, savings economist at the price comparison site Compricer.

The Riksbank's interest rate increases have caused the banks to raise both savings rates and mortgage rates.

But mortgage rates have increased the most.

The average interest rate for a mortgage with a three-month fixed period was 1.32 percent in January and had risen to 2.97 percent in October.

So an increase of 1.65 percentage points.

At the same time, the variable savings rate has only increased by 0.8 percentage points on average.

And the big banks have raised their savings rates even less, only 0.41 percentage points on average.

Banks profit greatly from the loophole

Variable savings rates have thus risen, but only about half as much as mortgage rates.

If you compare to the fixed mortgages and savings accounts with fixed interest, there is also a difference, but then it is not as big.

In addition, banks historically tend to raise mortgage rates first and then raise savings rates when interest rates rise.

- The banks are quite quick to raise mortgage rates faster than raising savings bank rates.

It's because they make a lot of money from that loophole, says Christina Sahlberg.

Inflation erodes the value of savings

At the banks and loan institutions that currently offer the highest savings rate, you can get around 2 percent interest on the money if you don't want to tie the interest rate.

At the same time, inflation is much higher than that, the rate of price increase in society was a whopping 9.7 percent in October, which means that the value of the savings was eroded.

- Compared to inflation, the savings rate is very low.

We lose money every day in our savings accounts because the interest rate is so low.

SEB and Swedbank lowest savings rate

SEB and Swedbank offer the lowest savings interest among the major players, whose customers only receive 0.3 percent interest on the savings account.

Why is the savings rate so low?

This is how Swedbank responds in an email to SVT Nyheter:

"All banking services are open to competition and we see that we have the market's best overall offer where saving is an important part.

Just as with mortgage interest, savings interest is set on a market.

We are neither the lowest nor the highest when it comes to deposits.

And on our fixed interest accounts, you can get interest from 1.60 percent in 3 months up to 2.63 percent in 2 years.”