Update:  Since this was posted, the rate on CIT’s 11-Month, No-Penalty CD has been raised to 1.85% and the rate on the top tier of Ally’s 11-Month, No-Penalty CD has been lowered to 1.5%.  So, as of March 2nd, 2018, CIT has a commanding lead in this product space.

I just wrote about how Ally’s no-penalty, 11-month CD had leapfrogged CIT Bank for deposits of $25,000 and above by raising their rate from 1.5% to 1.6%, thereby beating CIT’s 1.55% rate.  Well, they just raised it again, this time to 1.75%.  So if you’ve got $25K or more that you want to put into a no-penalty CD that allows you to withdraw the whole amount (no partial withdrawals allowed) without incurring an early withdrawal penalty while locking in a relatively high rate for nearly a year, Ally now has the most compelling offer out there, and by a significant margin.

Unfortunately, the rates on the other tiers of their no-penalty CD product were left unchanged:

• 1.75% APY for deposits of $25,000 or more
• 1.35% APY for deposits between $5,000 and $24,999.99
• 1.15% APY for deposits of less than $5,000

So CIT’s no-penalty CD yielding 1.55% for all deposit amounts is still the more compelling product for deposit amounts below $25K.

Apart from those changes, the rest of our initial comparison should be accurate as of December 19, 2017.  You can read the fine print and apply for Ally Bank’s no-penalty, 11-month CD here and for CIT Bank’s no-penalty, 11-month CD here.

As always, if you want to quickly compare these products against many of the best nationally-available deposit accounts available in the U.S., you can use our bank accounts tool.