Question
Anyone else notice Citibank is gimping both SB and Citigold over the next 2 months?
Citigold will no longer be the highest level at bank. They are introducing a new level called "Resevered" above Citigold that will require $500K cash/brokerage. No way to qualify based on mortgage balances. The new level at the bank will include a new free gimped FMA accounts, Free IRA, and all SB fee waived on the brokerage side just like having a full SB account. Like Free Quicken Access, Free Quicken Bill Pay, Free SB Bill pay from brokerage account, free SB credit cards, Free defered debit card issued against brokerage account etc.
Citigold non retirement brokerage accounts will be subject to min revenue or be subject toa $45 annual fee.
SB is lowing there balance requirements and combining Select,Prefered and Prestige into 1 new level called "Reserved" which will match the bank new level in assets and will allow linking and combining balances held both at Citibank and SB to reach this new level. Killing of "Travel and Rewards" as of May 28 all points left in "Travel and Rewards" will be converted over to "Thank You" points so no more redemtion into AA miles program. They are forcing all grandfather FMA accounts with Goverment Agency and Treasury sweep MMF into BDP outrages tiers so in effect they make Citigold sub par checking account look good if you maintain less than $500K in cash. There reason for taking away the Goverment Agency and Treasury sweep MMF is because they are closing both funds. I have a felling the reason reason is they want to try to force SB clients to swith over to Citibank for there banking needs and open Citigold accounts were they might higher margins on cash over FMA accounts.
Personally with all these changes I think BOA is sure looking good now. Compare there MRA/MM to FMA. The MRA account blows away FMA account as MRA/MM still offers both a Treasury sweep and goverment Agency Sweep requires $50K vs $500K. Gives you 30 free stock trades if you maintain $25K vs the new Citi/SB combo will nickle and dime you death if you have less than $500K. BOA has tons of Affinity MMA listed on there main web page now pay as high as 5.20% with balances of $50K+ and AAA still pays 5.38% with $50K+ while Citi E-savings now pay 4.5% and Ultimate pays 4.65%.
Is it just me or is the days of Citigroup offering some of the best products coming to an end?
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Are there any changes to Citigold?
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Are there any changes to Citigold?
Yeah what part of non retirement brokerage accounts will be subject to min revenue or an annual fee did you not understand?
Basically Citigold will become a banking product will no longer include free brokerage products. Ie if you want IRA with a brokerage accounts roth or traditional SB may impose a $45 custody fee starting on March 1 2008. Citigold will be able to waive bank side products fee only. CIS is disappering. Online trading commision will increase to full service commision prices on Mar 1 2008. All SB fee will be charged to Citigold Customers. Ie Quicken Download access, SB Bill Pay, annual fees etc.
Reserved the new level will waive both bank and brokerage side fee on everything.
Not trying to be rude about it either. But I thought it was pretty clear from the post about min revenue fees etc and what new level will waive over Citigold thus meaning Citigold customers will start to get hit with lots of fees on brokerage side if they have brokerage products.
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Yeah what part of non retirement brokerage accounts will be subject to min revenue or an annual fee did you not understand?
I think perhaps fredmertz was referring to changes to Citigold on the banking side. Are there any changes to Citigold if all you care about are the banking features?
Also thanks for the heads-up on the E-savings rate drop. I didn't even notice. They're now paying the same as ING savings. :mad:
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From the notices I have gotten in the mail on both my FMA and Citigold accounts held at the Citigroup PB. Here are the changes.
It looks like Citigold will become a mid level bank product. That for most people will include bank/mortgage balances only unless they want managed money services as SB is not a discount broker so placing your own trades onlne via them is pointless as of March 1 2008 online stock trades will be charged full service commision . Citigold will be basically a higher balance "Everything Counts Accounts" which will have a slightly better checking account(current tier Citigold Checking) and give you a few extra discounts and fee waivers on bank/loan products(which include current credit card annual fee waivers). All current customers with brokerage accounts who do not meet the min $500K requirement will have there annual fee's and custody fee's waived till march 1 2008. At which time the current SB fee structure will apply. That fee structure is as following:
All households who have atleast 1 non retirement accounts will be subject to min revenue fee of $100 to waive all custody and annaul fees. All annual/custoday fees and commision(includes trading commision, managed money services fee's, Mutual Funds loads and bond market ups) paid on retirement and non retire accounts by household will count towards the min revenue fee except fee generated form FMA annual fees and services which dont count towards the min revenue fee waiver.
All non reserved clients will be subject to a ton of fees from brokers side which they were never subject too. I will list some of the fees included in my SB letter entiled "Change in fee structure for Non Reserved Citibank/Smith Barney Clients as of June 1 2007":
Quicken Investor Smith Barney Download $6.95
Quicken Bill Pay $9.95 includes 20 connections per month and 20 bill pays
SB ATM rentel fee $1.50 per month
FMA Annual Fee $125
FMA Monthly Service Fee $25 if balance is less than $250K
Access(standard brokerage account) Annual Fee $45
Custody fee on retirement Accounts $45
I dont know about other people on here but except for 1 person who has a Citi mortgage everyone I know with Citigold account uses brokerage balances to qualify for it. Most of my friends do not have $500K + in Citibank either. Personally I dont have a Citi mortage as I got much a better rate via mortgage broker on a Chase mortgage which was 87.5 basis points lower than the best rate my PB could offer me.
Personally I wont be hit with any fees at all as I have a PB account. But I going to move my checking, savings and my self service brokerage account over to BOA. Higher interest rate checking via MRA, Higher rate savings account via Affinity MMA and 30 free stock trades. I will use Citigroup only to buy bonds as they have best bond pricing around.
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I currently use my mortgage to qualify for CitiGold, and it's over 500K. So, it would appear I still meet this tier going forward. While I'm not thrilled they dropped the e-savings rate, the customer service is still excellent, so I'm sticking until I see more changes.
From the notices I have gotten in the mail on both my FMA and Citigold accounts held at the Citigroup PB. Here are the changes.
It looks like Citigold will become a mid level bank product. That for most people will include bank/mortgage balances only unless they want managed money services as SB is not a discount broker so placing your own trades onlne via them is pointless as of March 1 2008 online stock trades will be charged full service commision . Citigold will be basically a higher balance "Everything Counts Accounts" which will have a slightly better checking account(current tier Citigold Checking) and give you a few extra discounts and fee waivers on bank/loan products(which include current credit card annual fee waivers). All current customers with brokerage accounts who do not meet the min $500K requirement will have there annual fee's and custody fee's waived till march 1 2008. At which time the current SB fee structure will apply. That fee structure is as following:
All households who have atleast 1 non retirement accounts will be subject to min revenue fee of $100 to waive all custody and annaul fees. All annual/custoday fees and commision(includes trading commision, managed money services fee's, Mutual Funds loads and bond market ups) paid on retirement and non retire accounts by household will count towards the min revenue fee except fee generated form FMA annual fees and services which dont count towards the min revenue fee waiver.
All non reserved clients will be subject to a ton of fees from brokers side which they were never subject too. I will list some of the fees included in my SB letter entiled "Change in fee structure for Non Reserved Citibank/Smith Barney Clients as of June 1 2007":
Quicken Investor Smith Barney Download $6.95
Quicken Bill Pay $9.95 includes 20 connections per month and 20 bill pays
SB ATM rentel fee $1.50 per month
FMA Annual Fee $125
FMA Monthly Service Fee $25 if balance is less than $250K
Access(standard brokerage account) Annual Fee $45
Custody fee on retirement Accounts $45
I dont know about other people on here but except for 1 person who has a Citi mortgage everyone I know with Citigold account uses brokerage balances to qualify for it. Most of my friends do not have $500K + in Citibank either. Personally I dont have a Citi mortage as I got much a better rate via mortgage broker on a Chase mortgage which was 87.5 basis points lower than the best rate my PB could offer me.
Personally I wont be hit with any fees at all as I have a PB account. But I going to move my checking, savings and my self service brokerage account over to BOA. Higher interest rate checking via MRA, Higher rate savings account via Affinity MMA and 30 free stock trades. I will use Citigroup only to buy bonds as they have best bond pricing around.
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I currently use my mortgage to qualify for CitiGold, and it's over 500K. So, it would appear I still meet this tier going forward. While I'm not thrilled they dropped the e-savings rate, the customer service is still excellent, so I'm sticking until I see more changes.
I dont think you understand. Mortgages balances will not count towards the balance requirement of Reserved Clients. Highest Account type your mortgage balance can waive is Citigold. And Citigold is still subject to all the new brokerage fees.
But I bet like my friend who has a mortgage with Citibank. You use Citigold as solely a checking account and maybe for a savings account too. And have a better discount brokerage else where and more than likely keep your IRA else where too.
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I dont think you understand. Mortgages balances will not count towards the balance requirement of Reserved Clients. Highest Account type your mortgage balance can waive is Citigold. And Citigold is still subject to all the new brokerage fees.
But I bet like my friend who has a mortgage with Citibank. You use Citigold as solely a checking account and maybe for a savings account too. And have a better discount brokerage else where and more than likely keep your IRA else where too.
Exactomundo! I also use CitiGold for the free annual fees on credit cards. Easy to churn miles that way. :D
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Exactomundo! I also use CitiGold for the free annual fees on credit cards. Easy to churn miles that way. :D
CIS never impressed me. I have also made my negative sentiment towards SB known. (As a recap, SB was not interested and quite rude when I had a smaller account. Now that I have grown up a bit, I will not let them touch my money.) I use Citigold primarily for banking and the associated fee waivers (free ATM, free Diners Club, etc).
I use Fidelity for investments. Recently I noticed that Fidelity has a pretty decent online banking system. They also have:
a. Tax-free core account option which currently has a 5.02% equivalent tax-free yield
b. Lower fees / commissions (with $50k); Very low fees / commissions (with $1mm)
c. Free AMEX Gold or discounted AMEX Platinum deferred debit cards
d. Fidelity Visa Signature (with 1.5% reward rate)
e. A local branch
The only reason that I continue to use Citi is loyalty (and the free TY points). I do not qualify for Citigold through my mortgage. I cannot justify keeping $100k there when I can put it to better use with Fidelity.
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They are introducing a new level called "Resevered"Re-severed? Wow, that's harsh.
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awake While I agree CIS was not that great. There fees were not outrages. For Example many of my friends used other low cost online brokers for most of there stock trading then transfered in long position into there CIS brokerage account which was free so that would satisfy there balance requirements for Citigold. While I understand Citigroup really ended up making little to no money on CIS side because of this type of tactics. Main reason my friends did that was because CIS commision made little to no sense in today market place compared to all other discount brokers except for bond purchases. Over the years like myself some of my friends bought some of Citi inhouse no load index mutual funds as well. Back when Citigold came out in 1988 $24.99 stock trades was the normal for discount brokerages. Citigroup never updated there commisions in close to 20 years. That is were the problem was with CIS.
If Citigroup wanted to make CIS more profitable they could have started by making there commision more competitive like BOA and Wells Fargo recently did who not only gives you limited amount of free stock trades if you meet certain reasonable requirements but there normal stock trades are more than 50% less and more in line with other online discount brokers and they offer a large choice of no load mutual funds while Citi only offers a very small selection of no load funds and most loaded funds.
Over the years I have lived with slightly higher equities commision mainly because I am not a big stock market person. I mostly buy bonds which is were Citigroup in general blows away most other brokers as Citigroup is largest bond underwriter in the world.
With all the new changes Citigroup has made it really hard to justify getting an FMA and maintain $500K min balance because FMA is no longer a worthwhile product. And with all the new brokerage fees it also made Citigold hard to justify for people who used brokerage balances to qualify.
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awake While I agree CIS was not that great. There fees were not outrages. For Example many of my friends used other low cost online brokers for most of there stock trading then transfered in long position into there CIS brokerage account which was free so that would satisfy there balance requirements for Citigold. While I understand Citigroup really ended up making little to no money on CIS side because of this type of tactics. Main reason my friends did that was because CIS commision made little to no sense in today market place compared to all other discount brokers except for bond purchases. Over the years like myself some of my friends bought some of Citi inhouse no load index mutual funds as well. Back when Citigold came out in 1988 $24.99 stock trades was the normal for discount brokerages. Citigroup never updated there commisions in close to 20 years. That is were the problem was with CIS.
If Citigroup wanted to make CIS more profitable they could have started by making there commision more competitive like BOA and Wells Fargo recently did who not give you limited amount of free stock trades if you meet certain reasonable requirements but there normal stock trades are more than 50% less and more in line with other online discount brokers and they offer a large choice of no load mutual funds while Citi only offers a very small selection of no load funds and most loaded funds.
Over the years I have lived with slightly higher equities commision mainly because I am not a big stock market person. I mostly buy bonds which is were Citigroup in general blows away most other brokers as Citigroup is largest bond underwriter in the world.
With all the new changes Citigroup has made it really hard to justify getting an FMA and maintain $500K min balance because FMA is no longer a worthwhile product. And with all the new brokerage fees it also made Citigold hard to justify for people who used brokerage balances to qualify.
Thanks Dolmar. I will look into BOA. In general I have been very satisfied with Citibank for checking/savings/credit cards/loans and Fidelity for investments.
My dilemma is that Fidelity is getting a lot better at banking. That is making it hard for me to remember why I use Citibank.
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a. Tax-free core account option which currently has a 5.02% equivalent tax-free yield
When you say 5.02% equivalent, do you mean that it's actually a lower yield that would be equivalent to 5.02% if it were taxable? The highest yields I'm seeing on their non-taxable money market funds are about 3.3%.
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When you say 5.02% equivalent, do you mean that it's actually a lower yield that would be equivalent to 5.02% if it were taxable? The highest yields I'm seeing on their non-taxable money market funds are about 3.3%.
That sounds right. You understand if you get a taxable money market fund of 5.10% you figure you pay 28% federal + 9.30% CA then you after paying taxes your yeild would be 3.20% so 3.3% tax-free for CA would be better. Now if you dont pay taxes anyways then you are better with a taxable Money Market fund.
That is why I personally am disappointed as I dont need tax-free income as I pay little to no taxes always because of my deductions and deprecations. So as far as I am concerned even tho they lowered the requirements to waive all fee of the FMA Account from $1 Million to $500K because they took away all options for a taxable MMF sweep and now only offer Tax-free sweep for Ca, CT, RI, NY and NJ or a national tax-free sweep which is only federal tax-exempt or BDP sweep with outranges tiers my FMA account in my opinion as of May 25 becomes worthless.
Which is why I opened a BOA Money Manager Account which offer treasury sweep currently paying 4.52% while not as good as my FMA which pays 4.61% is still better that what my FMA account will become on May 25. I also opened a AAA Money Market Account which pays 5.40% currently which blows away my E-savings account. The kicker is all I need to maintain between both accounts is $50K to waive all fees vs $500K to waive all fees in my FMA. BOA gives 30 free stocks trades a month as long as I maintain $25K+ in my money market account.
That is why I dont understand what the hell Citigroup is thinking.Make the limits 10X that of Bank of America. Pay worse interest than your competitors and raise your commision too because god forbid you even try to compete with BOA $5 stock trades or there free promotion.
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Dolmar, the BofA web-site indicates that there are 4 possible funds for the sweep account. However, it does not state what those funds are. Do you know?
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Dolmar, the BofA web-site indicates that there are 4 possible funds for the sweep account. However, it does not state what those funds are. Do you know?
If you download the application which can be found here https://www.baisidirect.com/Static/Pdf/Master_Rela_Account.pdf then look on page 9 it asks you pick your fund and it lists the funds as following:
Columbia Cash Reserves NSHXX (Pointless as it only pays 4.58% and fully taxable)
Columbia Municipal Reserves NMDXX (Federal Exempt in all states currently 3.01%)
Columbia Treasury Reserve NDLXX 4.52% (state tax exempt in all states)
Columbia Goverment Reseve NRDXX 4.54% (fully taxable only advantage to NSHXX is all Goverment Agency are AAA rated like US Treasuries)
Columbia California tax-exempt NADXX (only avalible to CA residents fully tax free both state and federal for Ca residents 2.93%)
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THANKS, Dolmar!