[wiz]

taolibuyan wrote:

Was told it's an English bank, so maybe it reflects the working attitude and efficiency in Europe, which resulted in their current economic situation...

It is a SG bank now from the stand point of SG as the single biggest shareholder and its global hq is based here.

[chopra]

taolibuyan wrote:

It's now TEN days after they said my account would be ready for trading, but the fact is NO, it's still not activated (must be a very difficult procedure to do a simple activation there I suppose).
.

It's very unfortunate that the customer service officer who served you at the bank didn't warn you of the LONG lead time if you sign up their online brokerage at the bank.

I was advised to register online and it took me only 2-3days. Most of us did that as well.

[MikeDirnt78]

taolibuyan wrote:

Haha thank you bro, you made me feel better thinking this way

I work w computer, so can do a lot of intraday trading at the same time, which is why this "no min" thing suits me.

Will follow ur advice, thanks

did you sign up online?

send out the secured email to remind them every other day.

[earthyblue]

10 days is nothing compared to my experience. I asked my parents to go bank and signed up in July. After 2 months still nothing. Until the bank admitted they sat on the case and failed to open the account for them.

I have to personally rang up their inefficient hotline who kept saying the relevant Dept will call me back, when they didn't. There was an incident that irks me which was the call center lady told me off that it's 10pm at night, that online Dept is off work and no one can give me an answer. I have to correct her by reminding her that I called in the morning and gave them until 5pm to call me back on updates, but no one called and followed up. If not I would not have to call the hotline after office hours, furthermore, I finish my work late.

They refused to give me their higher up email addresses and only when I threatened to send a personal letter to their ceo's residence before they got the account ready.

It was only 2 months and promise of escalation, then they managed to open the account for my parents. When I opened, it took about 1 week plus to get it ready by the online Dept.

Seriously this bank has a good product but very ineffective service standards.

[Investor Reeve]

I think is better to open up the account online, I get mine in less than 3 days

[apengrg]

I did hv my fair share of bad exp while trying to open an account too.

I applied it online. but about a week later someone called and asked me to go to their branch to sign the application form. i was "huh!" than what for apply online?

Was told there is a impt doc which needs to physically explain to me and witness me sign. thinking what they upto i when to the branch the next day since not far from my house.

The form is a paper which explain the risks of trading in stocks. was told after the banks closed and many lost money years back, its now a rule to physically sign the paper.

After hearing about the risks involved in buying shares...blah blah...i was next ask about my profile. Then the investment products started coming one by one. From buying gold to fixed coupon notes..etc.

Even insisted on fixing an appointment to hv a discussion with an expert to educate me how i can benefit in investing their products.

One week later got a call to ask me to attend a meeting for some investment product again. told him straight not interested.
Three day later, got a call again and was told to go to the bank to open an deposit account otherwise cannot do trading!

I asked why didnt open it when i was there at that time? again give me the bull stories....i simply told him to forget it.

[limster]

Cheap, fast, good. You can only choose 2 out of 3.

I managed to open an account but haven't used it yet.

I find I still prefer having a trading representative I can contact if I have any issues and having T+3 credit is so convenient as opposed to having to make sure there are sufficient funds for the trade....

[taolibuyan]

MikeDirnt78 wrote:

did you sign up online?

send out the secured email to remind them every other day.

No I called 1st to enquire, and was asked to go to the branch personally as I have not used this bank for 7-8 yrs and was considered as a new customer.

The good news is my trading account is finally open today. Two of the staff from different department called me today to notify. What made the difference was I made a 2nd trip to the branch yesterday afternoon.

At 1st the rm said he would call the management and try to materialize for me in the next few days. Not happy with the answer, I gave him a speech about what I think is "result-oriented" service. So apparently he did make some serious effort afterwards, cos this morning around 11am someone called me and said I can finally trade with the account.

Yes email & follow-up call would normally be sufficient for other firms. My broker in POEMS often call me back in 5 mins after I sent him an email. But for SCB, it's hard to say, I was afraid I will get another mechanical reply with no real action so I made a 2nd visit to the branch and luckily it worked

[taolibuyan]

wiz wrote:

It is a SG bank now from the stand point of SG as the single biggest shareholder and its global hq is based here.

In this case it must be hard for it to compete with the other local banks/security firms in some other aspects, so that it had to roll out with this offer and also open for 7 days a week until 9pm.

[taolibuyan]

chopra wrote:

It's very unfortunate that the customer service officer who served you at the bank didn't warn you of the LONG lead time if you sign up their online brokerage at the bank.

I was advised to register online and it took me only 2-3days. Most of us did that as well.

Yes, guess he consider having to wait for at least 10-14 working days a bit crazy as well? So what he told me was it would be ready within 1 week.

[taolibuyan]

earthyblue wrote:

threatened to send a personal letter to their ceo's residence

Hmmmm, clever move, have not thought about that.

[taolibuyan]

apengrg wrote:

One week later got a call to ask me to attend a meeting for some investment product again. told him straight not interested.
Three day later, got a call again and was told to go to the bank to open an deposit account otherwise cannot do trading!

I asked why didnt open it when i was there at that time? again give me the bull stories....i simply told him to forget it.

Yeah unlike what's implied in their website, the online feature does not really apply to new clients.

I did not get the investment BS, they must consider you an important customer with big potential, too bad they tried to sell their products to you the way they did.

[taolibuyan]

limster wrote:

Cheap, fast, good. You can only choose 2 out of 3.

Cheap: yes
Fast: NO
Good: to be verified...

[earthyblue]

taolibuyan wrote:

Cheap: yes
Fast: NO
Good: to be verified...

Cheap. 0.25% compared to Kayhian's increased 0.3% for US Stocks.
Cheap. No minimum. Minimum $30 from Kayhian and I can now buy bit by bit at different pricing or sell bit by bit when there is no min comm.
Cheap. For a dividend, I just received mine from one of the US counters, 30% deduction by US side. (applicable even in Kayhian), but the most disgusting thing Kayhian did was to slap an admin fee/charges, do a currency conversion and issue a cheque to me.

SCB will just send the dividend into my FCY settlement account. without any admin fees.

Good? So far the US side not so much problem. Only thing is for local side, may have some hiccups on their bad end.

[Yaco99]

wiz wrote:

It is a SG bank now from the stand point of SG as the single biggest shareholder and its global hq is based here.

Bro, the largest shareholder is Temasek but it's still domiciled in the UK and pays most of its taxes to UK and not to us leh. And it's global hq is not based here, most of the ExB members still sits in the UK. Only it's PB hq is based here and ScB PB doesn't even rank on the top 20 list as yet but is growing quite well here.