Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. I earn no commission for writing this post or if you signup for an account.
There’s yet another promotion that’s giving out free cash for a few minutes’ work, this time at the courtesy of UOB.
If you like taking advantage of such promotions, you can check out my post on the Singlife promotion where you can earn $30 or more.
Without further ado, let’s get into the details of this promotion.
Promotion: Cash Credit
This promotion awards a cash credit reward for saving money with eligible UOB accounts.
It is applicable to both new and existing UOB customers.
New Customers
If you’re not currently a UOB customer, you’ll receive a cash credit of $50 or $150 if you follow these steps:
- Apply for any eligible UOB savings account online
- Register your participation in the UOB Year End Savings Festival here by the 15th of the following month upon account approval
- Deposit at least S$5,000 or S$100,000^ into your account by the 15th of the following month upon account approval
You will receive a $50 cash credit if you deposit S$5,000 and $150 if you deposit S$100,000^.
Existing Customers
For existing customers, you’ll receive a $100 cash credit if you follow these steps:
- Register your participation in the UOB Year End Savings Festival here by the 15th of the following month
- Deposit at least S$100,000^ in incremental fresh funds* into any eligible UOB savings account by the 15th of the following month
*: Incremental fresh funds are measured against September 2021 Monthly Average Balance
^: If you deposit S$100,000 in incremental fresh funds, the funds will be earmarked for approximately 4 months
Technically, you can earn $150 from this promotion.
But that would require making a deposit of $100k which I don’t think many people would readily have.
And even if you do have $100k, you probably don’t want to deposit it into a savings account for 4 months just to earn $150 (0.15%).
On the other hand, depositing $5k to earn $50 is a pretty good deal – it translates into a reward of 1%.
The whole process took me about 15 minutes or less, which is a fairly little amount of effort to earn $50.
Qualifying Periods
This is a 3-month promotion running from 1 Oct to 31 Dec which is broken down into 3 1-month long qualifying periods.
Depending on when your account is approved (for new customers) or your funds are deposited (for existing customers), the deadline to register for the promotion will differ.
For example, if I’m a new customer and my UOB account is approved on 10 Nov, I belong to Qualifying Period 2.
This means that I must register for the promotion and deposit my funds by 15 Dec and maintain the funds in my account until 15 Dec to be eligible for the reward.
So if I make a deposit of $5k, my funds will be essentially “locked up” for ~1 month.
However, once 15 Dec has passed, I’m free to withdraw my funds – so I basically earned 1% on my savings in 1 month, which is amazing.
As stated above, if the funds deposited are $100k, the funds will be earmarked for ~4 months.
This means that the amount deposited will not be reflected in account statements and cannot be withdrawn during this time.
The lock-up period is significantly longer and the reward is significantly poorer than the $5k promotion, so I don’t think the $100k promotion is worth it.
Eligible Accounts
There are 5 savings accounts that are eligible for this promotion:
- UOB Stash Account
- UOB Uniplus Saving Account
- UOB Lady’s Saving Account
- UOB One
- KrisFlyer UOB Deposit Account
I won’t go too much in detail into each account, but I’ll give you the key information that I think are important to know.
UOB Stash Account
The Stash account is meant for fuss-free saving and awards bonus interest depending on your account balance.
Base Interest Rate: 0.05% p.a.
Bonus Interest Rate: up to 1% p.a.
Eligibility: at least 16 years old
Early Closure Fee: $30 (within 6 months of opening)
Minimum Daily Average Balance: $500(waived for 6 months)
Fall-below Fee: $2
UOB Uniplus Savings Account
The Uniplus account is your regular, old-school savings account that earns you 0.05% interest and does nothing else for you.
Base Interest Rate: 0.05% p.a.
Bonus Interest Rate: based on promotion availability
Eligibility: at least 16 years old
Early Closure Fee: $30 (within 6 months of opening)
Minimum Daily Average Balance: $500(waived for 6 months)
Fall-below Fee: $2
UOB Lady’s Savings Account
The Lady’s account is one of the more unique savings accounts.
It’s exclusive to ladies only and provides various benefits like cancer coverage, discounted dental services, medical privileges, and exclusive wellness classes.
Base Interest Rate: 0.05% p.a.
Bonus Interest Rate: N/A
Eligibility: at least 16 years old, female
Early Closure Fee: $30 (within 6 months of opening)
Minimum Daily Average Balance: $1000 (waived for 6 months)
Fall-below Fee: $2
UOB One
UOB One is UOB’s high-interest account, similar to the likes of DBS Multiplier.
Base Interest Rate: 0.05% p.a.
Bonus Interest Rate: up to 2.5% p.a.
Eligibility: at least 18 years old
Early Closure Fee: $30 (within 6 months of opening)
Minimum Daily Average Balance: $1000 (waived for 6 months)
Fall-below Fee: $5
Note that even though the advertised interest rate is “up to 2.5% p.a.”, the effective interest rate is actually much lower.
From the table above, the 2.5% interest is only applicable on the 5th batch of $15k account balance (ie $60k ~ $75k).
It is not applicable to the entire account balance.
This means that if your account balance is $75k and you fulfil both the spending and salary crediting criteria, the effective interest rate you’ll earn is:
0.2*(0.50% + 0.55% + 0.65% + 0.80% + 2.50%) = 1.00% p.a.
Obviously, 1% is much lower than 2.5% and I find this extremely misleading on UOB’s part, though it’s not objectively wrong.
KrisFlyer UOB Deposit Account
The KrisFlyer UOB account is another unique account that earns miles on top of interest.
You get to earn 5 bonus miles/$1 with eligible credit cards or 6 bonus miles/$1 if you credit your salary of at least S$2k into this account, as long as you maintain a monthly account balance of S$1k.
This sounds amazing to anyone in the miles game, but there’s a big catch.
The bonus miles are capped at 5% of your monthly account balance.
This means if you have an account balance of $10k, you’ll only be eligible for 500 bonus miles every month, which isn’t a whole lot.
Base Interest Rate: 0.05% p.a.
Bonus Interest Rate: N/A
Eligibility: at least 18 years old
Early Closure Fee: $30 (within 6 months of opening)
Minimum Daily Average Balance: $1000 (waived for 6 months)
Fall-below Fee: $2
KrisFlyer UOB Debit Card Annual Fee: $53.50, 1st year waived
Also, the KrisFlyer UOB debit card charges an annual fee – something you don’t usually see among debit cards.
While the card does come with some perks like ChangiWiFi discounts and exclusive Scoot privileges, I’m not sure it’s worth it.
You could try to get this fee waived, though I’m not sure if UOB will.
Which Account To Choose?
So, among the eligible accounts, which one should you choose?
Personally, I chose to open the UOB Stash account by the process of elimination, and that’s the one I’d recommend.
Since I don’t have an eligible UOB credit card yet, the KrisFlyer UOB account wouldn’t do much for me in terms of earning miles.
I’m not a female, so I’m not eligible for the UOB Lady’s account.
I already use DBS Multiplier and I think it’s better than the UOB One account.
Between UOB Stash and Uniplus, they’re pretty much the same except for the fact that Stash awards bonus interest based on your account balance.
While I don’t have any intention of maintaining a large balance in my account after this promotion, at least UOB Stash awards me for it if I ever choose to do so.
The only other account I think is worth opening is UOB Lady’s, if you’re a female.
The medical benefits like 1 free health screening per year and discounted dental services can be nice to have.
Surprise Deal Promotions
Even though this UOB promotion is a reasonably good deal in itself, they have surprise deal promotions every month to make the deal even sweeter.
In October, the surprise deal was a bonus $30 cash credit reward, so the total reward was an $80 cash credit for making a deposit of $5k.
In November, the reward was $100 GrabPay credits for a $5k deposit.
As you can tell, these rewards are better than the regular promotion.
However, these surprise deal promotions only run for a small window of time for each month.
The October promotion only ran for 1 week while the November promotion ran for 3 days.
There’s only 1 surprise deal promotion left for the month of December, so if you want to take advantage of it, you’ll need to be sure to catch this window.
Things To Note
Finally, before you go ahead and signup for this promotion, here are some things to take note of.
Online Account Opening
This promotion is only applicable for savings accounts that are opened online via UOB’s website.
If you open an account at a UOB branch, you won’t be eligible.
Transfer Method
When depositing your funds into the UOB account that you’ll open, the approved transfer methods according to the terms & conditions are:
- FAST
- UOB Cash Deposit Machine
- UOB Quick Cheque Deposit Boxes
- Over-the-counter at any UOB branch
- any other channels permitted by the Bank
For the sake of avoidance of doubt, I’d recommend making your deposit via any of the first 4 methods.
The most convenient one would be FAST via another bank account.
Promotion Registration
Next, remember that you have to register your interest to take part in the promotion at this link.
If you don’t, UOB won’t include you in the promotion and you won’t be eligible for the reward.
Early Account Closure Fee
Regardless of which savings account you open, there is an early closure fee of $30 that is chargeable if you close your account within 6 months of opening.
Obviously, incurring this fee will take a huge bite out of your reward for this promotion.
So you should take note to only close your account after 6 months (if you don’t intend to keep it).
Fall-below Fee Waiver
You might be thinking that the early account closure fee implies a 6-month lockup period of your funds.
Thankfully, this isn’t the case.
According to the promotion’s terms and conditions, you only need to maintain the funds in your account until the date stipulated by your qualifying period.
This should be the 15th of the following month you registered for the promotion (assuming you participate in the $5k promotion).
So once that date has passed, you’re free to withdraw your funds.
While many bank accounts tend to impose a minimum daily account balance and a fall-below fee for failing to meet that criteria, you don’t have to worry about it in this case.
UOB is waiving the fall-below fee for all accounts that are opened online for 6 months, except the KrisFlyer UOB account.
In order to be eligible for the promotion, your account needs to be opened online, so you automatically qualify for this waiver.
This means you don’t need to worry about maintaining the daily average balance in your account to avoid the fee.
So you can withdraw your entire $5k and park it in a high-interest account to make your money work harder after qualifying for the promotion.
Closing Thoughts
The UOB Year End Savings Festival is a pretty good promotion to get some easy cash.
It’s reasonably little effort to earn $50 with a chance to earn more during surprise deal promotions.
Even though you need to keep the account open for at least 6 months, you don’t need to maintain a balance thanks to the fall-below fee waiver, so there’s no worry of a lock-up of funds.
Will you take part in this promotion? Let me know in the comments below!