But, tbf, they’re willing to give you a really good interest rate for it
What it means: Quite a lot of people really don’t like Goldman Sachs, a big investment bank and top dog of Wall Street. Investment banks are banks for big companies and the uber-rich, and Goldman Sachs is the second biggest one (by revenue) in the world.
People don’t like investment banks because they think they help the rich get ahead at the expense of everyone else, blame them for the financial crisis, and/or think they’re staffed by shape-shifting alien lizards. (That last one is less funny when you realise it has its roots in anti-Semitism).
But Goldman Sachs has now set up a retail bank, which is the sort everyday, non-uber-rich people use. It’s called Marcus, and it’s about to open in the UK with an easy access account that pays 1.5 percent interest on savings up to £250,000. Easy access just means you can get your money out at any time, and the interest rate is an extra bit of money the bank will give you each year as a thank you for stashing your savings there.
1.5 percent, incidentally, is by far the best easy-access account interest rate most Brits can get. (HSBC, the UK’s most popular high-street bank, pays barely one-tenth of that). And lots of people are hopeful that Marcus’ high interest rate will make other banks worry they’ll lose customers if they don’t put up their own interest rates.
