Banks have always used the end of the year as a time to cut rates on savings accounts or allow promotional rates to expire, and/or to reduce benefits. For the last eight years, rates have been falling and the lack of competition has offered depositors little recourse but to accept these changes.

Things have finally changed. Rates are already beginning to increase.

Several banks have also recently reduced their rates from competitive rates to ones that aren’t. Even if your bank has given you some sort of great first year interest rate (Salem Five) or great 3 month rate (EverBank), you should not sit by and let them quietly reduce your rate to one that isn’t competitive.

And, if you are a business customer at a bank like Chase which is using the turnover from 2016 to 2017 as an opportunity to strip benefits that they have always offered you, it is also not OK.

Pure and simple, there is competition for your money. Not only is the rate environment increasing, but Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin figures to change the landscape in 2017 to make banking as a whole much more competitive. You no longer need to start the New Year sitting idly by and letting it happen.

See the best savings rates here.

Here are some neat offers that have just come to market that may indicate that the long period of low interest rates may be ending, and competition among banks for your money may be picking up.

Savings Bonus – Up to $200 from CIT Bank

CIT Bank is offering depositors up to a $200 bonus for funding a savings account with new money between now and the end of 2016. You can learn more about this offer here. BestCashCow finds this offer particularly attractive as discussed in this article, especially as CIT Bank always has outstanding customer reviews.

CD – 11-Month No Penalty CD from Ally Bank

Ally Bank is offering depositors an 11-Month No Penalty CD paying 1.25%. The rate is not particularly compelling as we have seen 1-year CDs paying 1.25% and over for some time now (see the best one year CDs here). What is attractive about this offer, however, is that the CD can be terminated without penalty at any point following six days of opening. Quite simply, there is no reason not to move your cash on deposit in an Ally savings account to their 11-Month No Penalty CD, even if you think you might need to access the cash over the next 11 months.

Online 2-Year CD Rates Cross 1.50% and Credit Union 5-Year CD Rates Cross 2.50%

A handful of online banks have begun to offer 2-Year CD rates over 1.50% (see the banks and rates here). More than a handful of federal credit unions are now offering CD Rates over 2.50% (the credit unions which you can access may vary according to where you live, see the 5-year credit union rates where you live here). BestCashCow does not currently recommend locking into CDs that are longer than 1-year in duration as we anticipate dramatically higher rates in 2017. It is nonetheless very encouraging to see banks begin to offer compensation for time deposits that have been better than anything we have recorded in over a year.

Financial stocks of all sizes have propelled the stock market to new highs since Steven Mnuchin’s November 28, 2016 appearance on CNBC. In that appearance, Mnuchin made a vague pronouncement that he wants “to strip back parts of Dodd-Frank”, saying that the law is too complicated and restricts lending. Neither Trump nor Mnuchin, nor anyone else on their team, has outlined with any specificity how they plan in particular to adjust Dodd-Frank, the Volker Rule or other federal legislation governing the financial sector.

Dodd-Frank, which emerged from Congress as a response to the 2008-2009 financial crisis, has been particularly burdensome to smaller and midsized financial institutions. These institutions have borne extraordinary costs of compliance and been forced, as a result, to retreat from those activities where compliance is too costly. Regulatory requirements can be most efficiently met by institutions with large economies of scale. As a result, the irony of the entire governmental response to the financial crisis has been that it has only strengthened the competitive position of the mega-financial institutions that created the crisis in the first place.

So, yes, a peeling back will change the competitive landscape and empower smaller and medium sized financial institutions. This peeling back, however, is not going to happen overnight nor will it be done with a magic wand. It is not going to happen as a result of broad pronouncements either. Changes to the law are going to take time to be formulated by a Republican legislature and then to overcome the opposition of Democrats like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

As 2017 progresses, this removal of regulations will coincide with a steepening yield curve, enabling financial institutions to benefit from a time spread (lending on the long end and taking deposits on the short end).

In the end, consumers may be real beneficiaries of increased competition from small and medium sized banks.

Now more than ever, it makes sense to look more broadly at the products that are offered by financial institutions in your geographical area.

Check the best savings rates where you live on BestCashCow.

Compare CD rates from banks near you.

See mortgage refinance rates where you live.