UOB One Account is Lowering Interest Rates Again Effective 1st August 2020

It was only a couple of months back when I reported about UOB One Account’s lower interest rates in May 2020. However, as rates continued their steady decline since then, we have seen the other competitors lowering their rates respectively for the likes of DBS Multiplier and OCBC 360. UOB is actually one of the last to announce for the UOB One Account, with a new (and lower) set of rates that will become effective starting 1st of August 2020.

Lower Interest Rates for UOB One Account Starting 1st August 2020

There is no change to the qualifying conditions. You need to spend at least S$ 500 per month on a UOB credit card (for example: UOB One Card, UOB Yolo Card, UOB Lady’s Card) to earn the lower interest rate tier. To earn the higher interest rate tier, you will have to spend the said amount on your UOB credit card AND credit your salary to the account or make 3 GIRO payments per month. The good thing about the GIRO criterion is that you do not have to fulfill a minimum amount for each GIRO transaction.

This is the 2nd time UOB revised the interest rates of the UOB One Account in 2020 alone. The revised effective interest rate starting 1st August 2020 is now at 1.20% p.a. assuming you max out the S$75,000 account balance on your UOB One Account. This is lower than the 1.796% p.a. during the May 2020 adjustment.  Base interest rate is still 0.05% p.a. if you do not meet any of the stated conditions for the month.

When is UOB One Account interest paid?

Do note that UOB One Account interest is paid in two installments each month. The base interest is paid on the first of the month while the bonus interest is usually credited on the second day of the month.

Comparison between UOB One Account vs OCBC 360 and DBS Multiplier

In my view, there is still a special place for the UOB One Account given that the salary crediting criterion can be substituted. This bodes well with folks who would have exceeded the cap in the other accounts for example (OCBC 360 is 70k while DBS Multiplier is 100k) and need another place to park excess funds.

Even for those who don’t exceed the cap of the competing products, the UOB One Account still makes for a good primary savings account. Assuming you have S$75,000 lying around and are able to make at least 3 GIRO transactions and spend S$500 on your UOB credit card, you are better off with the UOB One Account than the OCBC 360 which pays the same 1.20% p.a. interest but only up to S$70,000 (provided you do not fulfill the Wealth or Grow criteria). For the DBS Multiplier, provided you make the same type of transactions and you do not keep investments, insurance or home loans with them, you will have to make at least S$15,000 in total transactions each month just to hit the 1.20% p.a. interest tier. 

Conclusion

As mentioned previously, the current state of the UOB One Account is still competitive compared to its peers despite the lower interest rates. However, since interest rates of these bonus savings account products have fallen quite a bit over the past few months, and are now even lower than the prevailing housing loan interest, it does seem that some depositors may choose to park their funds elsewhere (i.e. retail or wholesale bonds or stocks) to achieve higher returns.