Thanks for the feedback. How about HSBC? I was told that a HSBC Malaysia Premier customer can open the respective sg accounts (savings + trading) without physically in sg.

i use prefunded acc to buy/sell. and yea you need to wait 1 day before the deposit is being reflected into your trading acc. better to park some money inside in advance rather than deposit only when you want to catch some shares.

also, any dividend receives will be going back directly to your prefunded acc. not your MBB SG acc. cause you bought your shares using prefunded. so the div goes back to prefunded acc. only bad thing is that they won't have live statement. but remisier told me that its coming dec 2017.

HSBC Singapore.

When I finally went to close my foreign currency accounts in the premier centre at the Leboh Ampang branch day before yesterday after transferring all the balances to other HSBC foreign currency accounts in HK/Singapore, I got a lot of attitude from the relationship manager who apparently thought that getting me to open an account with fees and lack of basic services like depositing checks in foreign currency, foreign currency cash withdrawals was a major favor rather than clearly unprofessional when he should have known that the foreign currency accounts elsewhere have all that without fees. Even though I tried to just keep it business like and just close the account and get a refund of the fees, I got all snort of snarky statements about please go to Singapore for every transaction, did you need to fly here when I asked why I was being served after many others who came in before me etc. accompanied by what I call the "Malaysian bank employee" sneer. Again, all this is similar to other's experiences in Malaysia and so different from banking in the US/Singapore/HK etc. even without any sort of premier status,  leave alone the highly professional service I receive from IB or TD Ameritrade. OCBC Malaysia seems an exception (no trademark sneer there unlike Maybank, CIMB etc.) and their foreign currency account does accept cheque deposit so maybe there is hope to get okay local banking experiences and maybe my wife might even be able to open a local account here (gave up after trying 6 banks as she couldn't take the aggravation and insults - again a big contrast from the US where they used to call her and plead to open accounts with free bonus money etc.).

I have to wonder if they specially recruit people without manners or specifically train them to be rude in the Malaysian banks here. I understand that the pay etc. is crap here but even the mamak shop employees who are paid even less seem to be able to behave quite pleasantly and reasonably. The govt employees here have been amazingly pleasant and helpful too and people here are also socially nice so there is something definitely odd about the whole bank employee culture here.

"Sifu",...

Anymore opinions ??

Or my brokerage with '0.12% with NO minimum comm and no monthly fees' has won the best prize ??

That's what I thought too.  I had the cash ready.  But they never asked for it. 

I prefilled out the application before I arrived so they basically just took it, photocopied some of my documents and said they'll call me.

I have started investing into digital-like banks in Canada many years ago. They were credit unions. Their interest rate was indeed higher back then compared to TD Bank, etc,... this really caught my attention. Will this be the same for the start of digital banks in SG today ? They will need to attract depositors.

I will open an acct asap.