[tangroberta]

Anyone have any experience or heard anything good, bad or ugly about this bank?
Doing my due diligence before I part with my moola.

[freeier]

wats their rates ?

i heard that they are a big black hole for suckers. put in the money and the money will go missing, NOT. 8-P

well, of cos for simple time deposit u are not expecting much frills and BEA is probably in hk for like 50 or 80 years listed in the stock exchange and part of HSI component.

wat are the pitfalls u are looking to find ?

[RastaMan]

tangroberta, and everybody else:

Have you done a time deposit with BEA?

They now have a promotion, and if you open an account with them and put your salary on that account they give you 3% of one month's salary and a credit card without charges.

Also, the time deposit (in US$) seem to be the highest in the market (4.6875% for one month) (while the NZ$ seem to be higher at ICBC).

Does anybody know if BEA is trustworthy? What is their rating?

Thanks.

[freeier]

BEA is listed at 23 HK, i.e. one of the earlier stocks listed in hong kong exchange. it is one of the component stock of the hang seng index.

generally i'd think it is safe. but of course, we can't tell if there isn't another enron on the horizon.. and we do hope that the central bank in HK (de facto) would make sure the stability stays stable.

[RastaMan]

Thanks!

They give 2.75% interest rate for savings accounts. I believe this is one of the highest in the market. How can they afford to give consistently higher interest rates than the competition?

[discobay]

Very reliable and best HKD time deposit rates in town. I opened a time deposit with them about a year ago and switched when DBS offered a better rate. Then DBS dropped that rate and would only offer a better rate to new money so I looked around and BEA were consistently the best. This plus their high street and atm presence (and those cute red uniforms) made my mind up. I also researched travel and home insurance recently and decided that theirs was best for me.

[RastaMan]

Well, actually HKD time deposit rates is 2.75%, which might be the best in town, but is still the same as the Savings account rate.

By the way, what is the interest in doing a HKD time deposit for 2.75 if you can do a USD for 5.6875? Since USD and HKD have (more or less) fixed exchange rate, I really don't see the point. Please enlighten me.

[freeier]

USD wld devaluate and HKD wld be worth more after 1 year of your fixed D terms.

that's the hypothetical case why the interest rate differential are there

[discobay]

As a privileged BEA customer you could have got 3.33% last month. If you can do without the HKD for a period of time then sure go for the USD time deposits but you will lose slightly when changing back.

[RastaMan]

freeier: But how likely is that to happen? The USD - HKD exhange rate have been fixed for many years.

discobay: How to become a BEA privileged customer?

I plan to change to Euros as soon as the Euro weakens a bit. Can one change from USD to Euros without first changing to HKD? I know in most countries one cannot, but in HK?