Originally posted by drawer:
What the hell is this?$500 not money ah?If according from what ur
friend say,our bank should impose the "below $500 fine $2" policy
long tome ago already,why wait until recent years then impose?I bet
it is becoz our government foreign investment lose money,thats why
our government everything must talk money with us!!!
I do not know what the presidents in the banks would think, but
for discussion's sake, we could come up with a few possible reasons
what the banks' public communications executives would reply with
if the question was posted in the press.
Perhaps the banks didn't have that many customers in the past, as
many old folks were still hiding their stash under their pillows,
in biscuit tins and the like. So they could not impose that policy
while trying to lure customers to deposit savings in the banks with
relatively higher interest rates. (That also means the banks are
saying if you don't have more than $500 to deposit, you should save
them the trouble by stashing it under your pillow, in biscuit tins
and the like.)
Perhaps the value of money was higher in the past (based on the
Consumer Price Index, the value of $500 in 2004 was about the same
as that of $160 in 1961), so the $500 account holders at those
times were not considered "kucing kurap" small-time
customers.
Perhaps the banks did not provide so many value-added services in
the past, like GIRO, online banking and easy access to ATMs, and
the charges that the banks have to bear on each customer for these
services were lower those days.
Perhaps the bank staff -- without high-flying foreign talent CEOs
like Jackson Tai -- weren't paid so much in the past, so overheads
were lower.
All in all, banks just want to make money. That's how they survive.
The closure of many POSBank branches, to the inconvenience of
customers was a good example of how much the profit margins mean to
DBS now. Thus if they feel that they would make a loss to keep that
$500 for a customer, instead of telling the customer to get lost,
they'd just politely inform him or her that they would have to take
away $2 for their trouble to keep that money.
In other words, you can give them money to keep. But if one's money
is too little, you'd have to pay them to take your money.
