“The house-buying frenzy has brought fresh hope for savers. Banks need more cash to back their mortgage lending, so they have been forced to boost savings rates,” she said. However, these (slightly) better rates are mainly confined to fixed-rate savings accounts, where you typically have to tie up your money for a year or more. The uncertainty created by the coronavirus pandemic means many savers want their spare cash sitting in accounts they can access very quickly, and with billions of pounds flowing into these, there is little incentive for banks to offer better returns on them. This may help to explain why, according to the data provider Moneyfacts, the average easy access account rate remains at a record low of 0.16% – down from 0.4% a year ago and 0.62% in May 2019.