Invest Insight

Having just activated my Maybank online banking (Singapore), I found that Unit Trusts are offered within the portal.

This was not really surprising since banks had been offering investment and bancassurance products for many years. What was surprising was that the unit trusts could be purchased online.

Last I checked, Citibank, one of the more advanced online banking portal, does not offer that. A quick scan at the other banks’ portal reveals the following:

• DBS has a similar option. Selection is limited to with DBS Asset Management and a few other managers. Subscription can be completed with just a few clicks away and no registration required. A big surprise.
• UOB’s option is only available to registered user under UOB Asset Management so I wasn’t able to look further.
• OCBC only has a few funds information available without any online purchase option.
• Citibank (Singapore), as before, still does not offer Direct online transactions for Unit Trusts.

Back to Maybank.

You will need a Unit Trust Account to subscribe funds online on Maybank2U (Maybank’s internet banking portal). Fortunately signing up is simple. Just fill up an online form, answer a risk profile questionaire and submit online.

It is interesting to see how banks are slowly going online with unit trusts. How would the competition be rewritten? Banks vs specialised portals like Fundsupermart, Finatiq and Dollardex.

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