Banks see IRA account boomlet

The plain-vanilla Individual Retirement Account a bank certificate of deposit grinding out tax-deferred interest is making a modest comeback.

The reason, some bankers say, is a combination of investors' flight to safe assets and their rotten experiences in the stock market in the past year or so.

"With war looming, we have more people calling in and inquiring about IRAs," said Kathy Kent, vice president of sales and marketing of Northern Nevada Bank.

"We've had people starting an IRA for the first time."

Unlike investors who talked up the hot stocks in their 401(k) plans, IRA investors move quietly.

"There's not a lot of dinner conversations about IRAs," said Heidi Foster, a portfolio manager in the private clients division of Wells Fargo.

"People are more subtly tucking their money away.

There's been a vast change in attitudes in the past few years."

Banks like the IRA business, largely because the certificates of deposits in retirement accounts tend to stick around for years.

It's a big enough attraction that most banks sweeten yields on CDs sold for IRAs.

At Irwin Union Bank in Carson City, Branch Manager Suzette Whitemaine said she'll tack about half a point of interest onto a big CD that will be parked in an IRA for five years.

Kent said Northern Nevada Bank just completed an advertising campaign targeted toward IRA customers.

"We didn't get a real big splash on it," she said.

"But we got some phone calls."

Foster, meanwhile, said she talks up IRA accounts with young wage earners, explaining the effects of compounding even when interest rates are low.

"It's always best to save when you're earning least," she tells them.

Foster noted, too, that changing rules surrounding IRAs mean that consumers who want to use them for retirement planning need to educate themselves.

As consumers do that education, Whitemaine said, they sometimes decide that even with all the safety and guaranteed returns of bank CDs, today's interest rates are too great a price to pay for security.