Simon Read: It's simple - banks streamline their accounts and we suffer

I'm pleased that so many banks and building societies have been cleaning up their ridiculously large and confusing savings ranges.

Since 2013, 13 providers – including Lloyds, Barclays, Santander and NatWest – have simplified parts of their savings ranges and a massive 711 accounts have been reduced to just 114. The Halifax, for instance, recently scrapped 51 old accounts and replaced them with just three.

But, as you'd expect with banks, a little bit of good news comes with a healthy dollop of bad. As part of the process of cutting down the number of confusing accounts, banks have moved many people on to lower interest rates.

"Thousands of existing savings accounts have been reduced in recent years and now, under the guise of simplification, more accounts are being moved over to lower-paying versions," warned Susan Hannums of Savingschampion.co.uk.

The average rate cut has been 0.51 per cent, though some lucky people have actually been moved into higher-paying accounts and ended up getting 0.58 per cent more on their savings. Lucky them.

For the rest of us unfortunates it's yet another example of the trickery that banks still feel compelled to resort to. They have had a chance to make accounts fairer but instead have chosen to make things worse for most of us.

s.read@independent.co.uk

twitter: @simonnread