RBS Triple Rewards Extravaganza

RBS (who took over ABN Amro) is running a promotion to woo depositors and investors. Here’s how it goes…

1. Fixed Deposit Extravaganza - 5% p.a. interest on fixed deposits for up to 3 months
My comments: pretty good above average interest rates. Too bad it’s only for 3 months.

2. Investment Extravaganza - invest a minimum of RM50,000 in structured deposits or unit trust to be entitled for a free gift selection.
My comments - not wise to buy unit trust from banks as they typically charge a high sales charge of 5 - 6% compared to the 2% offered by online unit trust portal such as FundSupermart & eUnitTrust. As for structured investment, you may be looking at a minimum investment of RM250,000.

3. Refer & Reward Extravaganza - get a free gift for every successful referral.
My comments: successful referral is when the person becomes a Royal Preferred Banking customer. Tough sell considering Citibank & HSBC has a very strong branding in the priority banking franchise and RBS is virtually a new name here.

And one more not-so-clever condition - you have to maintain a deposit to investment ratio of 2:1, i.e. if you were to put in RM250,000 into investments, you need to put in another RM500,000 as fixed deposits! So RBS is clearly aiming for the liquid high networth individuals. But this may not be the target market to aim for considering the stiff competition from other global brands here. RBS really has to carve out a niche for itself!