The Bankrate Monitor Index is a long running measure of interest rates paid on checking, savings, money market and CD accounts at banks and credit unions across the United States, and it eventually grew into the personal finance website known today as Bankrate.com.
From a Rate Survey to a Household Name
The index traces back to 1976, when the Bank Rate Monitor was founded. Its creator, Robert K. Heady, built the tracker in direct response to the Garn St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982. That federal law deregulated savings and loan associations and, for the first time, let banks offer adjustable rate mortgages and money market accounts. Consumers suddenly had more choices and more confusion, so the index gave them a way to see where deposit rates actually stood before picking a bank.
The company took its research online in 1996, a move that reshaped how people shopped for financial products. By 2000 it had renamed itself Bankrate Inc., merging the old standalone words
