As you might know that the interest rates in fixed deposit (FD) account are either negative or very low (at least in Germany). I still wanted to look for platforms which provides inflation beating interest rates or guaranteed returns. The best platform i could find is Zinspilot as it aggregates FD options from different banks in the EU. You can easily sort based on interest rates, duration of FD, banks and the country in which bank is based.
Account opening: You need to go through the postident process to open and verify your account. Once your account is verified you can use Zinspilot to open FD with tons of bank in the EU. A The website and customer support is available in German only. All the accounts are protected by EU-wide harmonized statutory deposit insurance for amounts upto 100,000 Euros per investor. Currently, the interest rate ranges from 0.15% pa to 1.85% pa, depending on the duration of FD.
If you have flatex account you can directly accees Zinspilot i.e. no need to create separate account for zinspilot.
Fees: There are no account opening, transaction or maintenance fees.
Best of Zinspilot: Rietumu Banka from Latvia is currently offering 1.85% pa for 5 years FD. A 20% tax will be withheld on income from the interest as per Latvian tax laws. If you provide tax residence certificate from Germany the tax will be reduced to 10%.
Do i recommend it. Heck no!!! first of all, the best interest rates don’t beat inflation and second you need to pay withholding tax plus all the paper work.
What if you still want to go for FD: I’d recommend to pick the FD from banks which are based in countries which don’t withhold taxes. for eg APS bank, Malta (1.5% pa for 5 year FD) don’t withhold any taxes but all the taxes are deducted by Zinspilot as per German laws. In this way, you can self-declare in Germany and hence avoid double tax and unnecessary paper work. There are ways to avoid double taxation but in my opinion it’s not worth the time because of meager returns!!
Skin in the game: I went for APS bank FD to try it out for an year even though i know returns don’t beat inflation but are guaranteed and better than the checking account (0%)!!!
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Financial Independence Journey 