How does bonus interest work on shared accounts?
To see if you’re eligible for bonus interest, we look at two things: whether you’ve met the bonus rate criteria, and your total savings balance.
If you have Shared accounts like Shared Save, Bills or Spend, any deposits made into those Shared accounts will help you meet the bonus interest criteria that applies until 30 September 2025. It doesn’t matter whether the deposit is made by you or your partner in finance, it still counts.
From 1 October 2025, transactions on your Shared Save accounts (other than accounts linked as offsets at the end of the month) will be taken into account when we work out if you have met the grow balance criteria (whether those transactions are made by you, or your partner in finance).
Find out more about the bonus interest criteria here.
If you qualify, bonus interest is paid on your total savings balance, up to $1M. This includes the full balance of your eligible individual Save accounts, plus 50% of the balance from any Shared Save accounts.
Here’s an example. At the start of November, you have $490K in a Shared Save account and $700K in an individual Save account. On the first day of the month, you deposit $10K into the Shared Save account, bringing the balance to $500K. No other transactions are made, apart from the interest credit you received.
In the above example, you’ve met the bonus rate criteria.
To work out how much of your savings will earn bonus interest, we attribute half of the Shared account balance to you (so $250K) and the full balance of your individual account (so $700K). That adds up to $950K which is under the $1M cap. This means that both of these accounts will earn bonus interest. And, the good news is that bonus interest is paid on the full balance of your Shared Save account, not just your half.
If you have multiple Save accounts, and your total savings is more than $1M (taking into account only your half of any Shared Save accounts), bonus interest is applied on account balances in this order:
- Shared Save balances (if you have more than one Shared Save account, the highest balance first), then
- Individual Save balances (if you have more than one Individual Save account, the highest balance first).
- If required, we’ll also look at the account opening date, prioritising the oldest account.
For more information on how bonus interest is calculated for your Save accounts, see ‘How is interest calculated’.