Liberty Bank Review: Checking, Savings and CDs

Liberty Bank’s Personal Checking Account requires a $50 minimum opening deposit. In addition, there is a monthly fee of $10, but you can waive it by keeping your daily balance at or above $500. If you don’t opt into e-statements, you’ll also incur a $12.50 fee for having a paper statement mailed to you.

The account could be useful if you write a lot of checks: It comes with unlimited check writing, and monthly statements include check images.

You can open a Personal Savings Account with $50 and avoid the $4 monthly fee by maintaining a balance of at least $200. The account pays 0.01% APY on any balance — that’s on par with what you’ll find at many large banks, but you can find much better rates elsewhere.

Another downside to this savings account is that only two withdrawals are free per statement period; each withdrawal after that costs $2. Most savings accounts allow at least six free withdrawals per period and some don’t have any limits.

Liberty Bank requires a deposit of at least $1,000 to open a CD. Terms range from three months to five years. Rates for CDs are much better than what you’ll find at one of the bigger brick-and-mortar banks, but other financial institutions offer even more competitive rates. Unlike checking and savings accounts, CDs can’t be opened online.

One unique feature of the Liberty Bank CDs is that you can choose to have the interest paid monthly, quarterly, semiannually or annually. You can also choose to receive the interest payment by check or as a deposit to another account at the bank.

Interest rates aren’t available online, so you’ll have to call or go to a branch to find out what they are. The bank has more than a dozen branches sprinkled throughout a few states: Alabama, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. Liberty Bank ATMs are available only in some of those states, though. The bank charges a $2 fee for using an out-of-network ATM, on top of whatever fee the ATM owner may change.

Customer service is available by phone on weekdays, and the bank doesn’t offer extended hours. You can reach a customer service representative only from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST. The bank’s mobile apps are rated well.

Liberty Bank charges a steep nonsufficient funds fee of $29 per certain kinds of transactions, such as a check that would overdraw your account or an in-person withdrawal. You’ll also be charged $1.50 each day that your account is overdrawn.

The bank doesn’t offer overdraft protection, but you can manually transfer money from a linked deposit account or personal line of credit to bring your account balance back up. There’s no fee for this (unless it’s from a Personal Savings Account and you’ve already had more than two withdrawals or transfers that month).