Standard Chartered US$ Debit Mastercard for US$ High Account

I started off with an SCB online trading account for foreign shares. While I eventually opened an IBKR account, I still kept LSE-listed ETFs I had already bought in SCB. In order to not put all my holdings in one broker, I decided to buy S$1k of foreign ETFs every month using SCB.

Initially SCB had no minimum commission, then they implemented minimum commission (unless you had priority banking). Fortunately by then, I was close to $200k so I did a transfer of one counter from CDP to SCB to hit $200k so that I could get PB and no min comms again.

One of the benefits of SCB priority banking is the US$ High Account ( a US$ bank account with chequebook and Debit Mastercard). I purchase things online regularly and having a US$ Debit card appeared to be very helpful, especially if I am spending my US$ dividends.

To cut a long story short, the US$ Debit Mastercard will save you money compared to an S$ credit card that makes tries to make a profit by converting your US$ transactions to S$.  The features of this card are:

• SCB's S$-> US$ exchange rate is better than the rate used by S$ credit cards. 
• If you don't like their exchange rate and think you can do better, then go moneychanger and change and deposit the US$ at the bank (website says cash deposit fees currently waived)
• 2% cashback on all purchases
• 1% transaction fee for overseas purchases so about 1% nett cashback.
• 0% transaction fee for using US$ to fund your paypal.sg account (apparently doesn't count as an overseas transaction - though one wonders if they will close this loophole)

Strategy Report September 2018

Foreign shares
Small top-up of holdings in Vodafone, Bhp, ING, Santander and Prudential


Singapore shares
Continued to build up position in Capitaland. It briefly fell below $3.30 this month so I bought, but soon recovered. Decided to continue to buy a bit more even while it climbed past $3.30 in order to have a decent position. A well-covered Dividend of around 3.5%  is very decent. Frasers Property, my related holding (my preference is of to buy at least 2 shares in the same sector rather than all-in one one) which has a higher dividend yield, has lower dividend coverage.

Overall I am still building up my warchest as I am only investing part of the extra income. I might even consider some savings bonds.

Dividend Report: August 2018

A lot of Singapore counters paid their dividends this month.

Total dividend collected in S$ Terms (includes S$ + US$ + GBP +A$ + HKD$): S$54,876.90