My recent experience in Singapore banking - I opened a HSBC offshore account from the Orchard road branch quite easily though they did take about a week or so after sending them the required documents. Oddly enough, they did not want to open a local account for me even though I have a personalized employment pass in Singapore which I am not currently using as they wanted a rental contract as proof of address (friend's address on pass not enough apparently).

Their service has been pretty good so far. They responded very quickly to my initial funding from IB and they were very nice and polite at the branch (HUGE change in attitude from HSBC Malaysia).

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.

Actually, I am maintaining the premier status here now with the MM2H fixed deposit which is getting really low interest compared to other banks but which I cant move as it is not allowed to do so. (I opened it in HSBC since I could do it from HK and HSBC was my main bank in HK). HSBC Malaysia is indeed a good place to maintain the premier status and since I have to have 300k in HSBC and no ability to move it, I at least get that in return. The HSBC credit cards are pretty good too (especially the premier travel one with loungekey access).

Their personal service really sucks though. I can understand occasional gruff and rude behavior due to stress etc. but the staff seem to go out of their way to humiliate and abuse you. My guess it is based on nationality from the observations of an Australian friend of Indian origin. He spent most of his life in India and is culturally very Indian and whenever he tried to open an account here, he would get very rude treatment until he brought out his Australian passport! Judging people based on nationality which they largely have little control over is really low class behavior. And I have had colleagues and bosses from the US, Bangladesh, Japan, China, HK, Italy, UK, Sweden, South Korea, Uzbekistan, Thailand, Morocco, Romania, India, Belgium, Malaysia etc. etc. (many more countries in fact but takes too long to list them all) and I have never found any correlation between nationality and good behavior or niceness and helpfulness.

In my experience, that is a lot better than in Malaysia where $$$ or qualifications/professional expertise does not count but skin color and passport does. I had zero problems opening my HSBC Premier account in Singapore and was treated really well (and, for that matter, for US and HK accounts as well). In contrast, I tried 6 banks here for opening a bank account for my wife and she advised me to give up in the end after looking at the extremely shitty way they would treat us. I also had to experience my share of insults and ridiculously disrespectful behavior while opening and operating my own bank accounts here (all premier ones since the premier qualifying amount here is quite small anyway) and just couldn't in many of them. Many of my Indian friends here have had the same issues though one is culturally and ethnically Indian but has an Australian passport and the behavior suddenly changes to polite as he brings out that passport!

Given that many of the bankers state outright lies like BNM doesn't allow non-workers to open bank accounts here, I have to wonder about the level of internal controls here and have given up the idea of investing any significant amount in this country and definitely not immovable stuff like real estate. The two Malaysians I have worked with before and who are very financially savvy also keep just a million ringgit or so here for basic family stuff but almost all their money is overseas.

I have to wonder how the bankers will behave if I turn up together with my British or Belgian bridge partners who have the same legal status as mine (MM2H) but who don't have problems opening bank accounts and are not given the same absurd lies and insults.

Given how much effort the govt puts into attracting people with the aim of investment with schemes like MM2H (and every govt employee I have dealt with has been unfailingly efficient and respectful so far - I definitely didn't expect that!), I wonder if they know the bank employees are sabotaging their work rather comprehensively. They definitely wouldn't need to raise the MM2H fixed deposit amount from RM 300k to RM 500k if not for this since very few MM2Hers would want to keep as little as RM500k (not even US$150k!) if they could have any confidence in the system. Quite a lot of the MM2Hers are Bangladeshi and the biggest proportion by far are the mainland Chinese. If they face the same issues I did, I have to assume that the Malaysian govt must have lost billions in investment just due to bankers who apparently weren't educated enough to know how to behave properly (why not hire them from Bangladesh or Indonesia also like they do for other jobs - they generally seem to be educated enough to behave well).