Overview

Ally Bank is an online bank and auto financing company. This profile focuses on the banking business. Ally Bank offers high-interest rates, useful financial tools, and a smart and easy to use interface. It has over $50 billion in customer deposits. It’s also a major lender of capital for equity sponsors and middle-market companies with transactions ranging from $15 million to $250 million. Ally Bank is a unit of Ally Financial, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, which became a bank holding company in December 2008. The bank is headquartered in Midvale, Utah. It has a B- rating with the BBB and a 3.5 star rating with Bauer Financial. 

What Are Ally’s Checking and Savings Accounts Like?

Ally offers a straight-forward and no-nonsense checking and saving accounts for people who are comfortable with a purely online experience. As well as high interest rates, Ally also stands out for its generous policy on fees. There are no maintenance fees, no overdraft fees or incoming wires fees. There is a $25 fee on outgoing wires, a $7.50 returned deposit item fee and a $25 overdraft fee.

Checking Accounts
Interest rates for Ally Bank checking accounts range from 0.10% to 0.60% APY. The 0.10% rate applies to accounts with less than $15,000, while the 0.60% rate is for people with a balance of least $15,000. Ally users have access to a network of 43,000 ATMs. Compare that to Chase’s network of 15,500. Ally will also reimburse users for out-of-network ATM fees up to $10 per statement cycle.

Savings Accounts
Ally offers 1.00% APY on savings accounts, regardless of what your balance is. Interest is compounded daily and there are no maintenance fees. If you make more than six withdrawals in a month, you do have to pay a $10 fee.

What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of Ally Bank?

Ally Bank is one of the best online banks around. It doesn’t offer the wide variety of financial products large banks provide to clients. Yet, as far as checking and savings accounts go, it’s a great option for people who are comfortable with a bank that has no brick-and-mortar branches.

These are our favorite features:

- High-interest rates for savings and checking accounts
- No minimum balance
- No maintenance fees
- No hidden fees
- Free access to a huge network of 43,000 ATMs

We are not so happy with these features:
- No branch locations. If you need face-to-face interaction, look for another bank.
- Only one checking account options
- Few banking product