its up to the bank's discretion to prospect and qualify e customer they deemed fit to receive the promotion, thats why they have the credit and risk management team
i don think ocbc is discriminating against low income earners, just that from business perspective it makes sense to target the mid to high income earners
1. higher salary means lower risk of provision and write down
2. higher salary ==> more CC spend==> more transaction fee from merchant
3. 3 credit card payment is for purpose of customer analytics..banks only want a 360 view of the affluent segment
4. higher salary means more deposit..increase capital adequacy ratio and profits
if i am a bank i wont want to waste time on low income earners too
Has it ever occurred to people that there are semi-retired people, or even part-timers who have the maximum savings in 360 (now $60,000) eligible for the bonus interest and fulfill every requirement, except that because they are partimers or semi-retired, the salary portion is not fulfilled?
And what about people who have $60,000+ simply because they have worked for some years and are good savers and not extravagant-for-the-sake-of-face, but just don't fulfill the salary criteria?
By stipulating $2,000, OCBC is telling all these people to, 'you die is your business' -- thinking that it is necessarily that way. But really don't realise there are many varied profiles of people.
On the other hand perhaps OCBC may actually know and have stats to these other profiles, and it may just be a simple reason of being stingy, PRECISELY BECAUSE there ARE many profiles of people (unlike what so many here are typically responding using the 'you don't deserve it becasue of your low salary' stereotypical reasoning, in essence the "you die, is your own business" gang) - because if, for example, OCBC were to include the CPF criteria of netting in coffers payers - anyone earning $500/month and above will have to pay cpf (resulting in those who earn $500 getting $100 docked from their pay) - if ocbc were to include that, then many more will get at least a bit more interest, right?
But of course, perhaps MAS wouldn't like that. I'm just asking because I find it funny that with similar offerings (of bonus interest accounts) by other banks, it is this criteria too, that only a $2,000 salary and above will be counted as fulfilling a criteria for bonus interest. So that's why I'm just asking OCBC if this is a MAS stipulation. Simple as that.
btw, these are some categories of people who may not currently qualify for the $2,000, but may have the maximum to earn the bonus interest (at $60,000 for now), with of course anything beyond that, at the base rate:-
1. semi-retired who are carrying on working part-time
2. partimers, who may be taking a break because of kids, or after working for many years, or those laid off, and doing contract work / permanent-part time work / freelance work in which some months don't amount to $2,000
3. same as above who earn less than $2,000
4. young adults who have just started working, but who may have (through savings, prevous part-time work while in school, parent's contributions etc) the maximum $60,000.
5. those still in uni and poly with a substantial savings, but doing part-time and therefore either don't earn $2,000 or it fluctuates, depending on hours work.
-- All these categories of people are losing out on the 1.2%. Surely, if the govt can take 20% for cpf, starting at a low $500/month, OCBC, the other banks and MAS should peg the salary criteria at $500, isn't it?
See - think out of the box a bit, and you'd see that the "they are targetting the $2,000 high end people" scholar thinking goes out the window. The world consists of more nuanced diversity of people in the economy than what our scholars are bred to typically think.
Think out of the box.
