If I have maximised the limit on my OCBC 360 account and have chosen to open a CIMB Fastsaver account, should I be doing transfers of the salary credited to the CIMB account monthly?

Hi Anon,

When you log in to your OCBC internet banking and go to your account details, you'll see a "Average daily balance increase vs. last month". As long as this amount is at least $500, you will get the step up bonus.

So time your transaction from OCBC to CIMB carefully. To be safe, aim to increase your OCBC balance by around $600 a month, as I've found out the hard way that trying to increase it by exactly $500 is almost impossible; the problem lies with the fact that OCBC calculates average daily balance and reports the number to you, I can never find a way to get the number I see. Hence i figured I'll just increase my balance by at least $600 a month to avoid the problem.

Yes, transaction date matters. In order to maximise OC 360, one has to have at least $70K in the account. Perhaps a good way is to do a calculation (via spreadsheet) on the interest earn if a specific amount is deposited in OC 360 (with $70K as base) vs transfer the balance to CIMB.