CFPB Sues Capital One Over Maintaining Two ‘360 High Yield Savings Accounts’ With Differing Rates

I find this lawsuit against Capital One fascinating: (CFPB article link)

CFPB is suing Capital One for cheating consumers out of $2B in savings account interest. See, Capital One froze the interest rate on their ‘360 savings’ account at .30% in 2019 and opened a new version called the ‘360 Performance Savings account’ which continued to increase its rates as interest rates rose.

We’ve seen many banks employ this kind of strategy. Essentially they want to lock in the older customers at the lower rate to pad their profits, and then use the new account product to lure new customers.

In the case of Capital One, the strategy was particularly egregious since they marketed widely their higher-than-average 360 Performance account with a name similar to the old 360 account. This led users of their old version to assume they are earning the higher rate.

In our list of Best High Yield Savings Accounts we try highlighting which banks take the low road and split out accounts to avoid increasing rates for older customers. The better banks steadily increase and decrease interest rates along with market norms.

Those affected by this Capital One scandal are likely people who are busy or older and never stopped to look through their statements and analyze interest rates. It can be, for example, someone who was advised to open the 360 account with the expectation that it would keep up with interest rates and then never followed up to see what rates are being earned.

Beyond the specific lawsuit against Capital One, I find this case intriguing since it can potentially reverberate in the wider banking industry as banks fear the CFPB’s wrath when using these types strategies. Hopefully this will result in banks doing away with the account splitting strategy, and offering all customers consistent interest rates.

View Comments (221)

  • WSJ article paywalled but you get the gist:

    "Trump Fires Consumer Financial Watchdog Who Drew Ire of Banks

    Rohit Chopra departs CFPB after pushing regulations that limited overdraft fees and banned medical debt from credit reports
    By
    Dylan Tokar
    Updated Feb. 1, 2025 12:06 pm ET"

    http://sadtrombone.com

  • Ironically this is EXACTLY what First Tech Federal was doing with their ‘Bump Up Certificates”. They kept the same certificate name but froze the existing bump up certificate holders and only offered the higher rates to ‘new money’ CDs….what a racket!

  • I recall Discover saving also had two different “online saving accounts”. Names are same but with slightly different APY. One of them is promo APY or something. Not sure what happened to them.

    • There was a AAA branded version for Discover savings that has since been discontinued. It was a slight APY difference that was offered at the same time.

  • So happy about this... I wanted the higher rates but Cap One wouldn't put me into the new accounts. WTF.

    • So CFPB sues Capital One, Capital has first 3 letters as Cap, now who is Cap? Captain America. What does Captain America do? Fight bad guys. Whos the bad guy? Nancy Pelosi. Nancy rhymes with fancy. What is one thing fancy people do? They eat vegan food. What is not there in vegan food? Eggs. Now that nobody eats eggs, egg price will go down.
      See its easy, you just have to wear your thinking cap.

  • I get email notifications at deposit accounts site to banks I follow, so I know right when rates drop and other issues.

    • Typical misinformation from someone with a severe case of TDS. Why give people facts when you can try to scare them with your liberal talking points?

      • Randy, do you support people giving the "roman salute" at official presidential events? Is that a liberal talking point? To normalize that behavior sounds pretty deranged to me. I wish you the best in your churning endeavors.

    • Let the CFPB burn! Burn baby burn!

      CFPB will now identify as dead/deader

      For those of you not here for card bonuses, think I saw Zuckerberg using incorrect pronouns in the parking lot. Better go get it!

    • Rich to bring in the guy into most conversations. The guy is not even president yet he is at fault somehow. How moronic.

    • Vocal idiots, silent skeptics, teetotaling jesus freaks, rawdoggin techbros, "free Palestine" anarchists... his net was wide... his appeal was strong... and now we sit and play a game of blame the other.

      This loss of collective voting reason was not without cause... both parties have been stripping away the middle class and bringing the lower class to become the vagrant class for the last 30+ years. Scotus came and gave us the kings disease and they did it while everyone in power just clutched their pearls.

      Biden said what we were all thinking while exiting the White Palace the other day... but why did he (and other Ds) not stick up for The People while they actually had power? Lip-service is not what we need... people are tired of it... never even got a chance to give Bernie a run... and yes now they picked a literal reality TV star.

      They were given no real choice. If they want change, they pick the change candidate who just so happens to be a russian asset. Desperate times call for desperate measures... but why were we all so desperate to begin with?

  • Even Flagstar started doing this. Others are Webster/Brio, UFB, etc

    The worst thing is that these $cumbags have so normalized this $cummy behavior and customers are considered stupid if they dont catch this

  • I noticed this last year. I looked at my 15+ year old Capital One savings and realized the interest rate was criminally low. What had happened to the old high yield account I had? Then to add insult to injury, when I googled them and found the high yield account on their site to open, it wouldn't let me open one online. It told me to call in to open. I only kept a minimal amount in there but now I've transferred everything out but the bare minimum. I'd probably get rid of them entirely but it's too much of a hassle since I use their checking account as my main account.