Synchrony Bank sells IRA CDs inside a Traditional or a Roth IRA, with no minimum deposit, and publishes their current rates on its IRA Rates and Terms page; its IRA CD page adds that APYs are subject to change at any time without notice. A standard certificate's rate is fixed for its term once you open it, interest compounds daily and is credited monthly, and breaking the certificate early costs 90, 180 or 365 days of simple interest on the amount withdrawn, depending on the term.
This page prints none of the rates. It sets out what the terms actually say, from Synchrony's own documents as read on 27 September 2026, chiefly the IRA CD and rates pages, the Consumer Deposit Account Agreement effective 1 July 2025, and the Traditional and Roth IRA application kits, whose application forms are dated August 2023. Where a detail rests only on a dated document, the text says so. What an IRA CD is covers the basics.
Synchrony's IRA CD at a glance
| Feature | What Synchrony's documents say |
|---|---|
| IRA types | Traditional and Roth; the Traditional kit's rollover and transfer forms also take SEP and SIMPLE IRA money |
| Terms | 3 to 60 months, per a January 2026 Synchrony blog post; the kits dated August 2023 list nine fixed terms in that range plus an 11-month No-Penalty and a 24-month Bump-Up; confirm on the rates page |
| Minimum deposit | None |
| Rate | Fixed for the term, Bump-Up excepted; reset at each renewal |
| Early withdrawal | On a standard certificate, 90, 180 or 365 days' simple interest on the amount withdrawn, by term |
| Maturity | Automatic renewal, with a 10-day grace period after maturity |
| Opening | By phone or by post, not online |
| Insurance | FDIC, with all your IRA deposits at the bank insured to $250,000 in total |
How Synchrony publishes and applies its IRA CD rates
The current rates live in the table on the IRA Rates and Terms page, whose footnote gives the date they are "accurate as of". The deposit account agreement then governs a certificate's rate:
- Set at opening, fixed for the term. The APY and interest rate "will be provided to you when you open a CD", and the rate "is fixed for the term of the CD".
- Compounded daily, credited monthly. A daily periodic rate is applied to the principal each day.
- Left in unless you ask. Interest stays in the certificate unless you ask for it during the term it is earned; the APY assumes it stays.
- Reset at renewal. A renewing certificate takes "the APY and interest rate we set at the beginning of that renewal period".
- The Bump-Up exception. A Bump-Up certificate's rate can be raised once per term, as set out below.
To judge a rate on the day, the FDIC's national CD rate table gives the national average for standard terms from one month to five years, and shopping IRA CD rates covers what to compare beyond the headline.
The early-withdrawal penalty, priced
The agreement has one penalty schedule for all its certificates except the No-Penalty CD, its waiver list names IRA CD holders, and both IRA kits contain the same agreement, so an IRA CD carries the schedule unchanged: simple interest, at the certificate's current rate, on the amount withdrawn.
| Term | Penalty | On $10,000 at an illustrative 4.00% | Interest earned covers it after about | Terms in this band on the 2023 kit list |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 months or less | 90 days' interest | $98.63 | 3 months | 3, 6, 9 and 12 months |
| More than 12, less than 48 months | 180 days' interest | $197.26 | 6 months | 18, 24 and 36 months; the 24-month Bump-Up |
| 48 months or more | 365 days' interest | $400.00 | 12 months | 48 and 60 months |
The 4.00% is an illustrative interest rate, not Synchrony's. The penalties assume a 365-day year, because the agreement states no day count, and the fourth column assumes daily compounding. The kits' 11-month No-Penalty certificate carries no penalty.
This is the third shape on the early-withdrawal penalty page, days of simple interest on the amount withdrawn, with the bands broken at 12 and 48 months. The cost jumps at the band edges: a 12-month certificate costs 90 days to break and an 18-month one 180; a 36-month one costs 180 days and a 48-month one a full year.
The agreement warns that the penalty "may be greater than the interest earned on the CD and may result in a reduction of principal". On the same illustrative numbers, a 60-month certificate closed after 182 days has earned about $201.44 against a $400.00 penalty on the $10,000 deposit, so it pays back about $9,801.44, which is $198.56 less than went in. Interest credited in the current term can be withdrawn without a bank penalty, but money taken out of an IRA is a distribution with tax treatment of its own; the IRA CD rules cover that layer. And because a Synchrony certificate is non-negotiable and not transferable, it cannot be sold: unless the certificate is a No-Penalty one or a waiver below applies, leaving before maturity means paying the penalty.
When the penalty may be waived
The agreement says an early withdrawal without penalty "may also generally be permitted" in four circumstances:
- The death of an owner, or the adjudication of an owner's incompetence.
- A withdrawal within the grace period after maturity.
- For IRA CD holders, a withdrawal made to satisfy an IRS required minimum distribution.
- For an IRA established under section 408 of the tax code, money paid out within seven days of its establishment, although Synchrony then charges the simple interest earned on the amount withdrawn.
The fourth pairs with the right, in both kits' IRA disclosures, to revoke a new IRA for any reason within seven days, by written notice. The list does not mention reaching 59½ or becoming disabled; the "59½" in the comparison table on Synchrony's IRA CD page concerns the IRS's additional tax, not the bank's penalty. If either circumstance applies to you, ask Synchrony rather than assume a waiver.
The RMD waiver has an IRS companion, set out on the rules page: with more than one traditional IRA, you calculate each RMD separately but may take the total from any one or more of them, so the RMD need not come out of a Synchrony certificate at all. A Roth IRA has no required distributions while its owner is alive. Synchrony's IRA CD page still gives the RMD age as 72, although its own Traditional IRA disclosure says 73; the IRS age is 73 for most people reaching it now and 75 if you were born in 1960 or later, and how to calculate an RMD has the detail by birth year.
Maturity, renewal and the 10-day grace period
A certificate renews automatically at maturity on the same terms, except that it earns, in the IRA CD page's words, "the offered rate of interest in effect at that time". A 10-day grace period follows, starting the day after maturity, in which you can withdraw without penalty or change the term or amount. A certificate redeemed in the grace period earns no interest for those days, and Synchrony may decline to renew one if it mails written notice at least 30 days before maturity.
Nothing can be added to a certificate during its term except credited interest. Synchrony's general CD page says funds can be added in the grace period; no Synchrony page read on 27 September 2026 says whether that holds for an IRA CD. Inside an IRA, new money must also come in by one of the funding routes set out below.
The No-Penalty and Bump-Up options in the 2023 kits
The IRA kits dated August 2023 list an 11-month No-Penalty CD and a 24-month Bump-Up CD beside the fixed terms. The IRA Rates and Terms page carried a footnote for each on 27 September 2026, but its table did not load for this check, so confirm on the day that either is offered inside an IRA. The agreement's terms:
No-Penalty. No withdrawal in the first six calendar days after funding. After that, an early withdrawal must take the full balance and accrued interest, unless it is made to satisfy an IRS required minimum distribution. The no-penalty CD page explains the six-day lock and prices the free exit on illustrative numbers.
Bump-Up. One free rate increase in the first term and one in each renewal term, to the rate Synchrony is then offering on Bump-Up certificates of the same term length. An unused option expires with its term; the new rate applies from the day you ask, is not backdated and leaves the maturity date unchanged. Synchrony will not tell you when its Bump-Up rates change, and the agreement accepts the request only in the app, on the website or by phone. At 24 months, the certificate sits in the 180-day penalty band.
Opening an IRA CD and funding it
"IRAs cannot be opened online," says Synchrony's IRA CD page, which gives 1-866-226-5638 to call to open an account, the number the kits give for Synchrony's IRA Specialists. The other route is to post the application kit's forms with a cheque payable to Synchrony Bank, unless the bank is collecting the money for you, and the kits say a confirmation follows by post within seven to ten days of processing. Each way of funding the IRA has its own form:
| How the money arrives | Form | What the paperwork says |
|---|---|---|
| A contribution for the current or prior year | Contribution | A blank tax year is processed as current-year, and the application calls the tax-year designation irrevocable |
| A transfer from another IRA | Transfer Request | Cash proceeds only, sent immediately or at the old CD's maturity date; the immediate option carries a warning that early-withdrawal penalties may apply. The Traditional form takes Traditional, SEP and SIMPLE IRA money, the Roth form Roth IRA money |
| A rollover from another IRA or an employer plan | Rollover Election; in the Traditional kit, add a Direct Rollover Request if Synchrony is to send for employer-plan money | The Traditional form covers regular, SEP and SIMPLE IRA money and employer plans such as a 401(k); the Roth form covers a Roth IRA, a Roth 401(k) or a Roth 403(b) |
| A conversion, Roth kit only | Roth IRA Conversion Request | For converting a Traditional IRA |
The IRS sets the limits. For 2026, contributions to all your traditional and Roth IRAs together are capped at $7,500, or $8,600 at 50 or older, or at your taxable compensation if less, and a contribution for a year can be made until that year's return due date, normally 15 April of the following year, not including extensions. A trustee-to-trustee transfer is not a rollover, is not taxed and does not count against the one-in-12-months limit on IRA-to-IRA rollovers. SIMPLE IRA money has a restriction of its own: the IRS says that "during the 2-year period beginning when you first participated in your employer's SIMPLE IRA plan, you can only transfer money to another SIMPLE IRA." Choosing the account type is the Roth-versus-traditional decision, and a Roth IRA CD has tax rules of its own.
Taking money out, and beneficiaries
To take money out, you ask for an IRA distribution form; once it is returned signed, the bank pays the money to another account or by cheque. A Synchrony IRA has one owner, who alone can contribute or take distributions, and it comes with no cheque-writing, no pre-authorised or telephone transfers and no ATM card.
The application takes primary and secondary beneficiaries in whole-number percentages adding up to 100. A trust beneficiary needs a copy of the trust document, and a spousal-consent section, for community and marital property states or where the bank requires it, says a married owner who names anyone other than the spouse as primary beneficiary needs the spouse's signature. The IRA Beneficiary Change form changes beneficiaries as often as you like. Synchrony also takes rollovers of a deceased holder's qualified plan into a beneficiary IRA; inherited IRA rules explains the deadlines an heir takes on.
Fees
Synchrony's product-comparison page says "We don't charge monthly service fees on any of our accounts", although the same page says its offers apply to personal non-IRA accounts only. The agreement's service-charge schedule, effective 3 March 2023, lists three $25 charges, none specific to IRAs: an outgoing wire, a stop payment and an overnight cheque. The IRA disclosures in both kits reserve the custodian's right to charge reasonable fees, naming opening, administration, transaction, transfer and closing fees among the possibilities, with at least 30 days' notice of a new or changed fee and a separate fee schedule if the custodian has a fee policy. No such schedule was found on Synchrony's site on 27 September 2026, so this page cannot say whether any IRA fee applies; ask for the schedule before opening.
Insurance and the $3 million cap
Synchrony Bank is an FDIC member, and the FDIC's BankFind database lists it as an active insured bank in Draper, Utah, certificate 27314. IRA deposits sit in the FDIC's certain retirement accounts category: one person's IRA deposits at one bank, traditional and Roth together, are insured to $250,000 in total, separately from that person's single-name accounts, and naming beneficiaries does not raise the limit. So $180,000 in a Traditional IRA CD and $100,000 in a Roth IRA CD at Synchrony come to $280,000 in one category, $30,000 of it above the insured amount. Are CDs FDIC insured sets out the categories.
Separately, the agreement caps the combined balance of everything you hold at Synchrony, whether in your own name, jointly or in a revocable trust of which you are a grantor, at $3,000,000, and lets the bank return money above it or refuse a deposit that would breach it. That is a bank limit, not an insurance one, and it matters before a large rollover.
What to confirm before opening
- The rates page on the day: the rate, its as-of date, the terms listed and any minimum per term.
- Whether the No-Penalty and Bump-Up certificates are offered inside an IRA today.
- Whether any IRA fee applies: opening, annual, transfer-out or closing.
- Whether money can be added to an IRA CD in its grace period, and how it would be recorded.
- Whether any waiver applies beyond the agreement's four, such as at 59½ or on disability.
- Your IRA deposits at Synchrony against $250,000, and all your balances there against $3,000,000.
- For a transfer in, the old certificate's maturity date, so the Transfer Request can name it.
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