OCBC 360 interests changes again (Apr 2016)

Previously, I posted about the OCBC360 account and its interest revision in May 2015
http://madstranger.blogspot.sg/search/label/OCBC360

Currently, the account has the following interest components:

If we ignore the "invest" component, most account holders can still earn an interest of 2.2% on the first 60k in the OCBC 360 savings account. In addition to this, you also earn an interest of 1% for any incremental balances.

Starting from April 2016, there will be some changes to the interest components. The changes are as follows:

The most important change is the bonus interest can be earned on the first 70k instead of the current 60k.

Other changes are as follows:

1) Payment component:
The interest has been revised from 0.5% to 0.3%
There is now a minimum of $150 for the 3 bills. Previously there is no minimum total to fulfill. There were account holders who paid 3 $1 to 3 different credit cards. They can no longer use this trick.


2) Credit card spending component:
The interest has been revised from 0.5% to 0.3%

3) Invest component:
The interest has been revised from 1% to 1.2%. Also, an additional lower tier has been introduced.

 

 Most people won't qualify this interest component unless they invest with OCBC.

4) Savings component:

There will no longer be bonus interest paid on incremental bonus.

Instead, an additional 1% is earned on the first 70k if you have at least 200k in the OCBC 360 account. This also works out to be a 0.35% across the 200k.

For most people, they will be earning lesser interest.

Comparison between the interests now and the revised interests:

		Average interest per month
	Interest	Now	Interest	Apr-17
Base		60000		70000
Salary	1.2	60	1.2	70
3 bill	0.5	25	0.3	17.5
credit card	0.5	25	0.3	17.5
incremental bonus on 1k	1	0.83		0
TOTAL		110.83		105

Assuming you have 70k in the account, you now earn $5 lesser bonus interest per month on average.

In addition to this, you lose out on he incremental balance interest. For every $1000 of incremental bonus, you get $0.83 lesser on average per month.

However, if you have a full 200k sitting inside the account, you will qualify for the "save bonus interest" and will get an additional $58.33 on average

  

Conclusion:

For some who have larger savings with the bank or do investment with the bank, they can gain more interests.

However, for most people, they will be earning lesser interests from 2.2% to 1.8%. Some have already started looking at alternatives like UOB ONE, BOC smart saver and Citibank maxigain accounts.