How to move USD from DBS to UOB at the cheapest possible cost for placing USD FD?

I have around 100k USD in dbs multicurrency account. Purpose of the fund is to standby for emergency usage due to family/extended family needs. Its been sitting there suffering opportunity cost for over a year now.

​

With the recent rate hike, UOB now has the highest USD FD rate for 6 month tenure at 1.38% and therefore I would like to move majority of the fund across to place them into short term USD FD with UOB.

​

However, after spoken to both DBS and UOB hotlines, here comes the good part:

• While DBS do provide free outward USD remittance, UOB do not accept inward remittance for placing USD FD. How convenient!
• While UOB only accept USD cash or demand draft for placing USD FD, DBS on the other hand no longer provide demand draft anymore. And yet charges 1.5% fees to withdraw in US dollars. That work out to very significant fee (around USD$1.5K) just to move the fund across for mere 1.38% interest. Via this route, the math doesn't work out to proceed with UOB.

It seems among the local banks they have such tacit agreement to close up all your options.

​

Anyone experienced this situation before? Is there any other path less costly to take?

​