CD Rates Leaderboard For Feb. 23, 2013

Well, savers, you’ve done it again.

After just 10 days at the top of the 24- and 36-month terms on our CD Rates Leaderboard, Wilmington, N.C.- based Live Oak Bank (www.liveoakbank.com) has stopped offering its CDs nationally.

A bank representative emailed us Friday night to say that, from this point on, new deposits will be available only to North Carolina residents, deposit customers and customers in the bank’s business trade lines and their referrals.

Seems that Live Oak Bank received a lot of requests for those certificates of deposit, which carried the highest nationally available CD rates we’d seen for those terms since 2011.

We’re not surprised, frankly.

This isn’t the first time desperate savers have overwhelmed a small bank after its great rates were featured on Bankaholic.com.

And Live Oak Bank is just that, a small bank. Its primary focus is small-business loans to veterinarians, dentists, independent pharmacists, funeral home owners and investment advisers.

Small banks like these typically lack the staff or sophisticated online banking portals needed to accommodate the high volume of inquiries a Bankaholic.com leader generates.

(Of course, a big bank could easily handle that kind of traffic. But … sigh.)

For those of you who managed to snag one of those great rates: kudos.

CSBdirect.com (www.csbdirect.com), now returns to the top of the Leaderboard in the 24-month term.

The online division of Florida-based Citizens State Bank pays 1.35% APY with a $1,000 minimum deposit.

The new/old 36-month lead rate of 1.40% APY is shared by CSBdirect.com and NexBank (www.nexbank.com), the division of NexBank Capital Inc., which has two branches in Texas and requires a $10,000 minimum deposit.

Banks qualify for our rankings by imposing no restrictions on who can buy their certificates of deposit, either online or through the mail.

Compare these returns with the best CD rates from scores of banks in our extensive database.