When I found myself taking over Shortie Designs in early 2024, one of the first things I had to do was set up a bank account. Initially I chose Commonwealth Bank, for a couple of reasons:

• I was an existing Commonwealth Bank customer
• There was a local branch
• No account fees on their business transaction account

Naturally, as the business gained momentum and the tax bill started to mount, I opened a companion savings account. I didn’t research it too much, and although their interest rate of 0.25% seemed quite low compared to what I was used to with personal accounts, my limited research indicated that it wasn’t unusually so for business accounts.

This setup served me well enough for the first year or so of business. However I was recently reviewing my books and upon noticing our interest income was lower than expected, discovered the interest rate had quietly been slashed to just 0.1%. That’s a 60% reduction. Discovering the already paltry rate had been so significantly reduced motivated me to do some more research into what was available.

And that’s when I discovered AMP Bank GO.

AMP Bank GO is a suite of accounts aimed at modern small businesses. It’s only available via a mobile app, which did make the application process a bit tedious and it won’t be ideal for every business, but so far it’s been great for me. What drew me to AMP Bank Go in particular was the interest rate on their business savings account, which was a whopping 4.2%. It even has a cool widget that shows you how much interest you’ve earned in the month so far, even though it’s only paid out monthly, which meant I could see the value of switching in just days.

A week or two after setting up the accounts, I opened the app to find a notice that after the RBA had cut interest rates, they would be dropping their interest rate to 4.0%. While slightly disappointing, it’s still far and away the highest business interest rate that I could see, and not only that, they had the courtesy of providing me notice. That simple act gives me a lot of confidence in how the bank is being run.

While I haven’t fully moved all our financial operations across yet for a couple of different reasons, I have moved all our savings over. And while I only moved our savings across incrementally instead of just in one lump sum, we still earned more in interest in the first month with AMP than the past entire year with Commonwealth Bank. 50% more, to be precise.

So why should you consider an AMP Bank GO account?

Benefits:

• No account keeping fees
• Earn Qantas Frequent Flyer points based on your average monthly transaction account balance
• Healthy business savings account interest rate of 4.0%
• Overview of interest earned, updated daily
• In-app notifications of updates to the interest rate
• Bank feed updates live in Xero, as opposed to daily like most other accounts

Cons:

• Mobile app only – no web interface. For larger businesses who rely on finance team, external bookkeepers or are less tech savvy, this may be a roadblock
• I can’t add the debit card to Pay.com.au. Not sure which side the issue is on, but it’s definitely a major inconvenience.
• The bank feed in Xero for the savings account doesn’t automatically update. Again, not sure which side the issue is on, but I have to disconnect and reconnect my AMP account to Xero to update the feed. Not a big deal being just the savings account but definitely annoying.
• Can’t schedule transfers between my own accounts. I’d love to be able to schedule a transfer as soon as I get my credit card statement, but instead I have to rely on reminders.

So if you’re a small business owner like me looking to make your money work harder for you, AMP Bank GO might be just what you need.

This is an independent review and has not been incentivised.