- 15 - minimum balances, or charges for transactions. In fact, until shortly before decedent's death, Peoples provided checking account customers with free printed blank checks; even after Peoples decided to charge for checks, it charged customers only for actual printing costs with no markup. As a result of Peoples' generous checking account policy, there were approximately 4,000 checking accounts open at Peoples on the valuation date; however, approximately 1,200 of those accounts had an average daily balance of less than $200 and total checking account deposits amounted only to approximately $1 million. As a result, most checking accounts were unprofitable for Peoples, inasmuch as the costs of servicing the accounts exceeded earnings on the deposits. b. Savings Accounts On the valuation date, Peoples had $7 to $8 million in deposits in savings accounts. c. Certificates of Deposit The overwhelming majority of Peoples' deposits were attributable to certificates of deposit. Those deposits included "hot money", large deposits that come from a wide geographic area in search of the best interest rate. Hot money is a volatile source of deposits because it is likely to be withdrawn anytime a better interest rate is being offered by another depository institution. Peoples was not interested in pursuing or retaining hot money, because, as discussed infra, it did not havePage: Previous 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Next
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