About the Kiplinger Readers’ Choice Awards
The Kiplinger Readers’ Choice Awards aim to recognize and celebrate the best products and services in the personal finance arena. We asked you, our Kiplinger community, to help us name the products and services you think have delivered excellent value in the past year.
The survey results, which we’re sharing here in our second annual Readers’ Choice Awards, offer valuable insight into which providers shine when it comes to your everyday interactions and experiences with them. Our Awards recognize excellence in everything from credit cards, banks and brokers to insurers, tax software and financial apps. For each category, we’ve listed an overall winner that earned the highest score. We’ve also highlighted other products and services that earned above-average scores for various criteria we asked readers to assess.
By voting, our community has helped us form our guide to the very best financial products. These are the products and companies that you think stand out from the crowd.
Kiplinger Readers' Choice Awards: National Banks
These large brick-and-mortar institutions have a presence in many states, and they offer a range of products and services, including checking accounts, savings accounts, certificates of deposit and loans. We assessed readers’ overall satisfaction with their bank, their opinion of its customer service, and the likelihood they would recommend the bank to others.
OVERALL WINNER: KeyBank
Outstanding for:
- Customer service
- Most recommended
- Overall satisfaction
Readers bestowed KeyBank with the highest total score among national banks. It has 1,000 full-service branches in 16 states scattered around the U.S. Notably, KeyBank’s basic Key Smart Checking account has no maintenance fee or minimum balance requirement.
Key Select Checking comes with extra perks, such as reimbursement of out-of-network ATM fees, and the monthly fee is waivable if you have $5,000 monthly in direct deposits or meet other requirements. Savings accounts with KeyBank recently yielded as much as 4% for the first six months, and one of the CDs has a 5% yield over a nine-month term.
Huntington Bank
Outstanding for:
- Customer service
- Most recommended
- Overall satisfaction
Huntington Bank also earned high praise from readers. “An excellent bank that cares about its customers,” says one survey respondent.
Huntington operates approximately 1,000 branches in 11 states, primarily in the Midwest. The bank offers four types of checking accounts; some are loaded with perks, such as unlimited no-fee withdrawals from non-Huntington ATMs and interest rate benefits with money market accounts and savings accounts.
If you’re looking for a no-fuss account, check out Asterisk-Free Checking, which requires no minimum opening balance and no monthly maintenance fees. Yields on money market deposit accounts hover at about 4.4% on balances of $25,000 up to $2 million.
Chase Bank
Outstanding for:
- Customer service
- Overall satisfaction
Chase is the largest bank in the U.S., with millions of customers and more than 4,700 branches in all of the lower 48 states. “For such a huge bank, they seem to do most things right,” says one reader. Survey respondents also complimented the personal touch that the bank offers clients. “A Chase representative occasionally calls just to check in, which is really appreciated.”
The bank offers a handful of checking and savings accounts. To avoid a monthly maintenance fee on its basic account, Chase Total Checking, maintain a $1,500 minimum balance in checking or meet other requirements. CDs with yields up to 5% were recently available, depending on the deposit amount and term.
TD Bank
Outstanding for:
- Most recommended
Readers called TD Bank “accessible, friendly and competent” and “extremely accommodating” in our survey, and they spoke highly of its customer service. “TD Bank reps really go out of their way to resolve issues,” says one respondent.
With more than 1,100 branches in 15 states and Washington, D.C., TD has a large presence on the East Coast. Its Complete Checking account charges no monthly fee if you keep a minimum checking balance of $500 or meet other requirements, and Beyond Checking (maintaining $2,500 in checking is one way to avoid the monthly fee) comes with benefits such as free standard checks and reimbursed wire transfer fees.
