Citibank promotion for opening new account.

[veemon]

There are some benefits.

For example with HSBC and Citi you get worldwide free transfers to another HSBC or Citi respectively (or something like that) and with SCB you get things like free priority pass lounge access. They do try and up sell a lot of investment products to you though.

I would say, at the end of the day, if you are able to get these accounts for free, why not?

you can have free transfer worldwide even with a Citibank basic account. but for HSBC, u need to be a premier customer

[veemon]

I wonder how much money the banks make on these premier gold services? I never understood the use of them apart from showing off you have one when in the end of the day the bank is just a place to put your money and get them to pay your bills.

Bank makes money by taking the deposit and loan to someone. and because for gold/premier account, they sort of have a deposit of at least HKD 1mil for loan to someone. that's how they can afford higher cost (with those better lounge and customer service) with the increased revenue.

But my personal opinion, never upgrade ur account unless you know the cost benefits outweight the opportunity cost. Think about it, with a HKD 1 mil of deposit, you can place a time deposit with another bank for better rate (and chances are these banks are not the same as your main operating bank). and that's the opportunity cost.