Rabobank is exporting the retail deposit strategy adopted in New Zealand to Australia. The bank last week began marketing a high interest saver account, paying an ongoing variable 6.60 per cent at call, well above the 6.25 per cent cash rate.With the Raboplus deposit account Rabo is now targeting a very different customer segment to that traditionally sought by Rabo in the agribusiness banking segment in Australia.Bryan Inch, head of financial services Australia and New Zealand, said Rabo was entering the at call savings market following the same business plan and financial model that has proved successful for the bank's strategy in Europe and New Zealand, where funds invested will be used to generate domestic lending growth.In New Zealand Rabo is already using retail deposits to fund a quarter of its rural book, with an interest rate fifteen points shy of the local base rate at 7.60 per cent. Since the NZ launch in early 2006, 26,000 accounts have been opened generating NZ$1.2 billion under management, exceeding the bank's projections for the first twelve months by forty per cent.Inch said the quiet local product launch was deliberate, and although they do have projections for the first twelve months of operation, they are not short term focused and view the success of projects with a longer term payback."The product itself and the pricing structure will build our client base as we are using the same financial model and business plan in Australia that has proved so successful in other countries."Australia will only require fourteen staff who will be used to establish the accounts. There are no branches and all transactions are straight through processed and are originated by the client, so are basically paperless."One European operation has sixteen staff and 75,000 clients, so local operations can increase dramatically with very little extra cost."The account would like to attract the higher net worth sophisticated investor, but being online with no minimum balance, it may prove attractive to a much more accessible and broader market.The 6.60 per cent interest rate is not an introductory rate, and is priced to be competitive to its rivals and attractive to its customers.Inch said the Raboplus strategy is to maintain an interest rate in the top three of all at call accounts to maintain an increasing flow of funds to increase domestic expansion.BankWest offers 6.8 per cent, but only for a twelve-month honeymoon; Westpac a condition-riddled 6.3 per cent; with Suncorp and NAB products coming in at 6.15 and 6.10 per cent respectively. The ING Direct Savings Maximiser no longer leads the pack, currently offering an ongoing variable of 6.00 per cent.General features of the account vary little from its competitors' products, allowing unlimited transactions between a nominated account with zero fees, with the added security provided by the Digipass system.Digipass is the defining feature of the account. It is an electronic device to generate a random number or electronic signature for the user when logging online to the account.Inch said every single Rabo internet account in