Thursday, April 2, 2015

OCBC360 interest rates revision Part 1


Last year, I blogged on how the OCBC360 account can earn you 3.05% per annum.
http://madstranger.blogspot.sg/2014/04/earn-up-to-305-in-interest-with-ocbc-360.html

Recently, OCBC announced some changes on the revision of interest rates on the account. The details are as follows

Screenshot extracted from: http://www.ocbc.com.sg/personal-banking/notices.html

My thoughts:
The 3 bill payment and credit card bonus interest are reduced from 1% to 0.5%. Not only that, the credit card minimum spend criteria has increased from $400 to $500. This makes it harder to meet the criteria.

OCBC mentioned that there will be 2 new ways to earn bonus interests but did not provide details at this point. I suspect the 2 new ways plus the existing 3 ways are likely to give the same 3% bonus interest. If this is so, it makes it harder for us to hit the full 3% bonus interest. We need to hit 5 criteria instead o the current 3.

With the Singapore Saving Bonds (SSB) releasing in the 2nd half of the year, many people will shift their money to the SSB if the OCBC360's bonus interest are no longer attractive. Will OCBC reduce their bonus interest rates at this juncture? We will know once the details of the 2 new bonus interests are released.