In my last article, I shared about banking with UOB One
Savings account here.
I’ll share how I managed to get about 6.12% of interest by
switching over.
So if you are looking out for a bank to store idle cash next year, you might want to consider this strategy.
The Base Rate
To get the base Interest rate of 5%, we need to
fulfil the following requirements.
Basic requirements:
- Spend $500 on eligible spend – credit/debit card expenditure on UOB ONE card
- Credit your salary of a minimum $1,600
- Maintain the daily average balance of 100k
As mentioned, I don’t have 100k cash lying around so I’m
sharing my account with my parents and giving them interest.
Sign–on bonus
This is normally called an “Online Account Opening promotion” and is only for the first 200 customers. The main thing that caught my eye is that there are various payouts for different customer tiers, i.e. new customers or existing customers but opening a new type of account.
In my case, I chanced upon a 3-day flash promotion during
16-18 Jan 23 where I needed to:
- Open a new account during this period
- Deposit fresh funds of $8,888 by the end of 31 Jan 23 but withdrawable on and after 1 Feb 23
- Maintain the minimum balance of the account for 9 months.
- There was no limit to the number of applicants unlike the usual promotions.
The reward was $128 / $108 / $88 depending on the customer tier
and I managed to qualify for $128 as I had no previous relationship with UOB.
Salary Credit
This is kind of simple, just apply for the salary credit programme and start crediting my salary. I get $50 for this and this promotion is always ongoing.
Cash Credit
This is seasonal and I see that there is an ongoing promotion with a lower cash reward but with lucky draw chances. I applied for the Lunar New Year Promotion where an
incremental deposit of $100,000 would allow a cash reward of $888.
An incremental deposit of $50,000 is also available with a reward of $388. (more detail here)
I needed to sign up for the promotion and indicate the deposit amount. This is quite important as changing it would require a review process.
The other thing that’s not very clear is that even though the promotion
period might be over 2 months, there are different qualifying periods. i.e.
if you submitted the form in January, then you need to deposit the amount by
the end of January to qualify.
In my case, I checked with them and realised I didn’t
qualify as I didn’t deposit the funds in time and had to resubmit the form followed by the deposit.
The other thing is the promotion can be stacked with Sign-on
Bonus but the same funds cannot be used to qualify.
I needed to fund a total amount of fresh funds of $108,888
and maintain them until I qualify for all of the promotions.
The other condition was that there is 3 month earmark period where the money will be in the account but not available for withdrawal. If you need the money, then the cash awarded needs to be returned. Moreover, the earmark period starts in March and ends in June but since I had to deposit the funds by Feb the total lock-in period is about 3.5 - 4 months.
Cash Credit +
There is are side quests to the Lunar New Year promotion is called “golden carrot“ which is worth $28 each, where up to 3 golden carrots can be award by doing the following:
- Salary Credit of a minimum $1,600
- Setting my Paynow to UOB
- Successful referral of at least 1 friend to the Cash Credit Promotion.
In my case, I managed to qualify for 2/3 of the conditions which amount to $56.
Aftermath
After attempting the promotion, we normally don’t know if I
have qualified for them. The only way to know is to monitor the payout. I received the Cash Credit award on the day the funds were earmarked
while all other rewards were received at the end of April.
In total, I managed to get an additional $1,122 or 1.12%
With a daily balance of $100k, the total interest earned for
the year would be 6.12% which is pretty good for a savings account without lock-in.
That said, I did face a lot of issues due to the other decisions I
made this year but I’m glad things worked out in the end.
Bonus
I didn't cover the cashback from UOB One Card as I have covered them in the last article here, but the partnership with Shopee for the 1st 6 months is very attractive.
There is also an additional side quest tagged as "eAngbao" every Lunar new year period where you could qualify for a lucky draw of up to 8 times the paynow "transfer amount" through UOB. Multiple transfers are allowed.
Sadly I wasn't lucky enough, but I would try again next year 👼
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