Changes to Standard Chartered Bank Brokerage Fee on 1st August 2016
I received an letter from Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) Singapore informing of changes to the brokerage fee starting 1st August 2016. In summary, the brokerage rate for personal banking customers rose to 0.25% (from 0.20%) for markets outside SGX and the implementation of minimum brokerage fee of 10 AUD/ CHF/ EUR/ GBP/ SGD/ USD for shares traded in these currencies or 100 HKD or 1000 JPY.
| Prior to 1 Aug 16 | From 1 Aug 16 | |
|---|---|---|
| Brokerage Rate – SGX | 0.20% | 0.20% |
| Brokerage Rate – Others | 0.20% | 0.25% |
| Min Charges | 0 | 10 AUD/ CHF/ EUR/ GBP/ SGD/ USD 100 HKD 1000 JPY |
So what does it mean?
If you have been using SCB platform to dollar cost average (DCA) indexes, your fees will be substantially increased due to the min charges. Let’s say you are buying 100 units of SGX:ES3 at S$2.81, the difference is 3.352%.
| Prior to 1 Aug 16 | From 1 Aug 16 | |
|---|---|---|
| 100 units of ES3 at 2.81 | S$281.562 | $291.00 |
To break even (at 0.20%), you will need to purchase S$5,000 worth.
So what is the next platform for DCA?
Unless you are DCA-ing at $5,000 (or more) monthly, it might make more sense to go for POSB Invest-Saver at 1% and 0.5% for Nikko AM STI ETF and ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund respectively.
What do you think?