Friday, May 1, 2015

OCBC360 interest rates revision Part 2

The OCBC 360 changes are announced.

 Changes include:
1) "credit your salary" bonus interest increased from 1% to 1.2%
2) "pay 3 bill" bonus interest decreased from 1% to 0.5%
3) "Spend on credit card" bonus interest decreased from 1% to 0.5%
4) "Spend on credit card" bonus interest spending criteria increased from $400 to $500
5) new bonus interest: "insure or invest" bonus interest. To qualify, you must "purchase any new eligible financial product from OCBC of at least the minimum amount, such as Endowment of at least S$8,000 in annual premium, or investment products such as Unit Trust or Structured Deposits of at least S$40,000."
6) bonus interests now applies to the first 60k instead of 50k
7) additional 1% on incremental balances. Incremental account balance is the difference between current and previous month's account average daily balance.This bonus interest will be paid on incremental account balance of up to S$1,000,000.


Other thoughts:
On the whole, I feel it is harder to earn the bonus interest. I am not interested to invest nor insure with OCBC. So the new 1% is out. For the credit card bonus, it makes it harder to qualify and the bonus interest is reduced. Also, UOB seem to be offering a better deal on this.

We will not be able to get much out of the additional interest on the "incremental balances". Unless we find another similar scheme and start transferring  additional balances to and fro on alternate months to earn the bonus on alternate months.

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