With the cash rate at 4.35 per cent and the RBA board meeting next Tuesday widely expected to hold, the big online savers are advertising their best headline rates in years: 5.50, 5.40, 5.10. Every one of those numbers has an asterisk, and the asterisk is the business model. The headline is a bonus rate, paid only in months where you clear every condition. The base rate underneath, the one you earn the moment you miss, runs between 0.40 and 1.00 per cent at most major providers.
That gap is not an accident of product design. Treasury's 2023 inquiry into retail deposit rates and the ACCC's deposit market study before it both found the same thing: a large, stable share of bonus-account balances earn the base rate in any given month because the holder failed a condition. The banks know the failure rate when they price the headline. You are not the customer the 5.40 was priced for; you are the customer the 0.55 was priced for, unless you actively manage it monthly.
The hoops, by name, as at June 2026
- ING Savings Maximiser (headline about 5.40 per cent): deposit $1,000+ into the linked Orange Everyday, make five or more card purchases that settle in the month, and grow the Savings Maximiser balance month on month. Three separate hoops; the settlement-timing one catches people who tap five times in the last week of the month. Base rate if you miss: 0.55 per cent.
- BOQ Future Saver (headline about 5.50 per cent, ages 14 to 35 only): deposit $1,000+ and make five eligible transactions from the linked account. The age cap quietly ends the party at 36.
- Westpac Life (headline about 5.00 per cent): grow the balance in the month, excluding interest. One $200 withdrawal for car rego in a month where you deposited $150 kills the bonus on the whole balance.
- ubank Save (headline about 5.10 per cent): deposit $500+ across linked accounts monthly. The gentlest hoop of the majors, and the bonus applies up to $100,000 per customer.
- Macquarie Savings Account (headline about 5.35 per cent): no behavioural hoops at all, but the headline is a four-month introductory rate on new money up to $250,000, reverting to roughly 4.75 per cent. A different trap: the welcome rate, which relies on you never reviewing it again.
- CBA NetBank Saver (headline about 5.10 per cent): five-month intro margin, then reversion to a base around 2.35 per cent. The reversion gap at CBA is the widest of the majors, and the balances sitting on the revert rate are exactly why.
Note what is missing from the list: the Big 4 main-brand "bonus saver" products (CBA GoalSaver, NAB Reward Saver, ANZ Progress Saver) are all advertising headline rates 50 to 100 basis points below the online leaders while running equally strict hoops. Holding a GoalSaver at 4.40 per cent with growth conditions when ubank pays 5.10 for a $500 deposit is paying your bank roughly $350 a year per $50,000 for brand familiarity.
What a missed month costs
The arithmetic the product disclosure statement never does for you: $50,000 sitting in an account paying 5.40 per cent earns about $225 in a month. The same balance at the 0.55 base earns about $23. One failed hoop, $202 gone, no notification beyond a line in your statement most people never read. Fail three months a year, which is roughly what the behavioural data says an unmanaged account does, and you have donated $600 on a $50,000 balance. Across the system, with household deposits above $1.5 trillion, the gap between headline and realised rates is worth billions a year to the banks, which is why the structure survives every review that criticises it.
After the May hike: the pass-through scoreboard
The May cash rate rise to 4.35 per cent was passed to mortgage customers in full, within a fortnight, by every major lender. On the deposit side the picture was selective: most of the online leaders passed 20 to 25 of the 25 basis points to their headline bonus rates, while several majors passed 10 to 15 to base rates and left intro and revert rates untouched. The asymmetry between mortgage-side and deposit-side pass-through is the oldest trick in bank margin management, and it widened again this cycle.
How to actually run this
- Pick your hoop deliberately. If your salary lands monthly and you tap a card daily, ING's conditions cost you nothing. If your cash flow is lumpy, a growth condition like Westpac Life's will fail you several months a year; choose a deposit-only condition like ubank instead.
- Set a phone reminder for the 25th of the month: check transactions settled, check balance higher than last month, top up if short. Ninety seconds of admin protects roughly $200 a month per $50,000.
- If you will not do monthly admin, take the no-hoops rate. A clean 4.75 to 5.00 per cent with no conditions beats a theoretical 5.40 you will realise eight months out of twelve.
- Diarise intro-rate expiries the day you open the account. The Macquarie and CBA welcome rates are genuinely good for exactly four to five months, and the product is priced on you forgetting that.
And the EOFY footnote, 21 days out: interest is assessable income in the year it is credited. If you are juggling deferred income or a one-off capital gain this year, when your term deposit matures and credits matters. Worth a look before 30 June, not after.
Disclosure: Your Finance Guide has no commercial relationship with any deposit-taking institution named in this piece, receives no commission on savings accounts, and our ALG broker partnership (ACL 505575) relates to lending products only. Rates quoted are from public rate cards in early June 2026 and change frequently; check the provider's current PDS before moving money.