Building societies are struggling to cope with a huge demand for new accounts from savers hunting for better returns on their nest eggs.
The five biggest societies — Nationwide, Coventry, Yorkshire, Skipton and Leeds — together hold some 90 per cent of the money in the 43 societies.
They have all seen a huge increase in savers looking for new accounts, and have raised rates to as much as 2.85 per cent on easy-access accounts — a best buy from Coventry Building Society — and 3.7 per cent on one-year fixed-rate bonds.
- Check out the best easy-access rates and best fixed rates here. 




NS&I sees a _600m dip in new savings account deposits... but... Punching above their weight: Small building societies now...

A spokesman for Nationwide says: 'We always do our best to answer member queries as quickly and efficiently as possible.
'Our latest available data shows that our average speed for answering calls to savings' members was two minutes.'
A spokesman for Skipton BS says: 'At the moment, we're taking around six minutes to answer calls on average.
'That's longer than usual, due to a mixture of market-leading savings and mortgage products, as well as more customers seeking help and Kombi Servisi reassurance with what to do with their money or borrowing in light of recent interest rate rises and general market uncertainty.'
This week, Money Mail waited eight minutes on hold before speaking to an adviser at Skipton. We managed to get through to a person at Nationwide after holding on for 13 minutes.
At Coventry we were 67th in the queue.

Yorkshire said the wait would be longer than five minutes and we we finally reached a person after 13 minutes. Leeds took 16 minutes to answer.
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