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Best Savings Accounts In Singapore – If You Don’t Want To Keep Jumping Through Hoops

Often touted as a #LifeHack in advertisements, media and even conversations we have with our colleagues, friends and family, high-interest rates savings accounts have become increasingly popular in Singapore.

It’s hard to see why anyone would pass over such a great deal. In many instances, these high-interest rate savings accounts claim to offer over 3% interest on your balances. This is astronomical compared to the 0.05% offered on many regular savings accounts.

Why Your High-Interest Rate Savings Account Will Often Not Pay The Maximum Interest

If you’ve signed up for a high-interest rate account at any of the banks that offer it, you would quickly realise that it’s almost impossible to earn the maximum interest that are offered by these accounts.

This is because they often require you to jump hoops. These hoops include crediting your salary, which you can obviously only do with one account, as well as completing transactions such as paying a certain number of bills through the account, spending above a certain amount on your credit card with the bank, applying maximum balance cap and even requiring you to purchase financial products such as investments or insurance, which you may already have or do not require, with the bank.

That’s not to say these savings accounts become unsuitable. In fact, many may still offer better interest returns even if you’re unable to accomplish all the tasks that you need to fulfil in order to unlock interest payments.

Read Also: [2022 Edition] Best Savings Accounts for Working Adults in Singapore

Why You May Want To Go For A Savings Account That Doesn’t Require You To Jump Hoops

First and foremost, you’re not a circus tiger. Banks, the ringmasters in this situation, should not have the power to make you jump hoops, then decide to light it on fire and add more hoops (by changing its requirements) to make it more difficult (or entertaining?) for you to meet all requirements that unlock the maximum interest payments.

It’s also a little stressful to have to keep track of all these transactions you have to complete each and every month. How much you’ve spent on your eligible credit cards, whether you’ve paid a certain amount of bills by the end of the month and even worry if your employer credits your salary promptly each month. These tasks add little to-dos that can bog us down.

We only have 24 hours each day, and we have to choose where we should spend our free time. Being entertained watching Game of Thrones, the Walking Dead and other awesome series on TV? Getting healthier by going for a run, playing football and swimming? Earning a few hundred dollars more each year choosing the best savings accounts? It’s really a trade-off because it takes time to stay on top of your savings accounts.

Next, any unnecessary transactions you make could negate all your hard work. If you’ve realised you’ve only made $450 in credit card purchases instead of the required $500, you now have to think of the best way to spend $50 to earn your interest this month. This action by itself could render your efforts to earn a higher interest rate useless.

Many times, we could also have other credit cards that offer us better cashbacks or miles than the ones we need to use to unlock better interest rates on our savings accounts. There may also be better investment or insurance options elsewhere, and we should not sign up for one that does not suit our needs just to unlock the bonus interest rates.

One other drawback is that when we exceed the maximum caps placed on our high-interest rate savings accounts, any additional savings will only earn the base 0.05% interest.

Read Also: OCBC 360 Account – Here’s How You Can Maximise The Interest You Earn On This Savings Account 

The Best Savings Accounts – If You Don’t Want To Jump Through Hoops

Not all banks offer savings accounts with decent interest returns on your savings, especially without having to jump through multiple hoops. To save you time, we’ve done some of the research on which accounts require a minimal level of “jumping hoops” to receive the interest rates they pay.

As a caveat, we realise there may be limited options. And even these options require some hoop jumping, but the barriers (and mental stress to achieve them) are much lower compared to the high-interest rate savings accounts.

Rates are accurate at time of writing. With banks starting to revise the interest rates on their high interest accounts amid the rising interest rate environment, these rates might be subject to revision in the (near) future.

BANK SAVINGS ACCOUNT

RATE (P.A)

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

CIMB FastSaver Account

Up to 0.3%

• Must maintain a minimum balance of $1,000
• First $10,000 receives 0.3% p.a.
• Next $65,000 receives 0.3% p.a.
• Above $75,000 receives 0.15% p.a.

UOB Stash Account

Up to 1.0%

• First $10,000 receives just 0.05% p.a.
• $10,000 > $40,000 receives 0.05% p.a.; bonus interest 0.25% p.a.
• $40,000 > $70,000 receives 0.05% p.a.; bonus interest 0.55% p.a.
• $70,000 > $100,000 receives 0.05% p.a.; bonus interest 0.95% p.a.
• $100,000 > receives 0.05% p.a.

Maybank iSAVvy Savings Account

Up to 0.3%

• First $5,000 receives effective interest of 0.15% p.a.
• $5,000 < $50,000 receives effective interest of 0.2% p.a.
• $50,000 < $100,000 receives effective interest of 0.2% p.a.
• $100,000 < $200,000 receives effective interest of 0.2% p.a.
• >$200,000 receives effective interest of 0.3% p.a.

Standard Chartered e$aver Bonus Interest

Up to 0.8%

• Bonus interest is paid on eligible incremental balances up to $1,000,000
• Rates are only applicable from 1 June to 31 July 2022
• Deposit balance earns base interest of 0.05%; incremental balances receive 0.75% p.a.

Citi MaxiGain Savings Account

Up to 0.31%

• Must maintain a minimum balance of $70,000 to earn bonus interest
• Up to $70,000 receives base interest of ~ 0.01% p.a and 0.3% (bonus interest)
• Bonus rates of between 0.025% to 0.3% p.a. is applicable if you increase or maintain your account balances each month

One other thing you should consider is how much money you should be keeping in your savings account. This is because you could be using your money more efficiently by investing it.

Read Also: [2022 Edition] Complete Guide To Buying Singapore Savings Bonds (SSB)

Lastly, what you can actually do just as easily is use a high-interest rate savings account, and credit your salary to it. This should earn you a base interest that’s already decent. You can then put any money beyond the maximum cap levels on your high-interest savings accounts into these savings accounts with a lower barrier to earning decent (albeit slightly less attractive) interest rates.

If you know of other savings accounts that offer savers a decent interest rate, and yet not require us to jump through too many hoops, do share it with us and other readers on our Facebook Page.

This article was first published on 22 November 2019 and updated to reflect the latest interest rates.

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