Martin Lee @ Sg
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Cheaper Brokerage Fees for Shares

DBS Vickers has recently started a new product that might trigger the next price war in shares brokerage fees.

Currently, the commission rates for trading of stocks goes something like this (for trades below $50k):

0.5%, min $40 for broker assisted trades

0.275%, min $25 for online trades

For online trades, part of the commission will still go to a broker who is in charge of your account. The broker earns a cut because he has to bear the risk of any default of the account.

DBS Vickers new account that is not serviced by any broker. The commission rate (for trades below $50k) is only 0.18% with a minimum of $18.

This is possible because all trades in this account has to be cash settled. Funds has to be transfered into the trading account before you can buy. This is done via a direct transfer from your DBS internet banking. Access to the DBS Vickers account is also done via DBS internet banking.

This means no contra trades are possible. No issue as I never advocate contra trading anyway.

For more details of this service, visit:

this DBS page

Other brokerages will be forced to act otherwise they will start losing their market share.

If the size of your transactions are above $100k, then it won’t make any difference as the commission rates for large size trades (for online) is currently already at 0.18%.

Leave a Comment:

13 comments
kunYi says 12 years ago

Hi,
Newbie question. Can i create an account with them and sell shares that i brought using OCBC broker?

Reply
    Martin Lee says 12 years ago

    Hi Kunyi,

    As long as the shares appear in your CDP, you can sell it using your DBS Vickers account. However, note that the special commission rates do not apply when you are selling using DBS. It only applies to the buy cycle using cash upfront.

    Reply
Pat Lim says 13 years ago

Sound interesting ,How to do the trading, do I need to open a new account? Pat

Reply
    lioninvestor says 13 years ago

    Dear Pat,

    You need both a Vickers account as well as DBS internet banking.

    Reply
Jack says 14 years ago

Hi Intheknow,
Only if it is within T+3, i.e. still in your holding account before it gets transferred to CDP. Once the shares are with CDP, you cannot sell using cash upfront.
So, for the bulk of the transactions, I think the savings would mostly be with buy trades. You do have to bear with the current inconvenience of logging into your ibanking and vicker’s account if you want to monitor live prices.
That aside, after trying out the Vicker’s platform, there are some advantages over poems.
It is a pain to navigate in poems as there is literally one screen whereas vickers can open several windows.
The good thing is that I believe the various broking houses are tyring hard to catch up with more establish platforms.
Rgds,

Reply
Intheknow says 14 years ago

does this $18 commission apply to SELL trades as well?

Reply
Jack says 14 years ago

Hi Lioninvestor,

Yes, you are right, there is live pricing on the vicker’s platform. Not only that, there is time sales and trade distribution. I’m impressed.
Coming back to ibanking platform, I called Vickers and this is what I was told.

Only ibanking offers the 0.18% commission so you cannot trade using Vicker’s platform if you want to have a lower commission. What this means is that I have to monitor using Vicker’s platfrom for live prices and trade using ibanking. Not ideal and I am sure (or hope) sooner rather than later, they will merge. I have also written to ibanking to highlight about the concerns with ‘half page’ and scrolling so hopefully, they get that resolved as well.
The final ‘feature’ that Vicker’s needs to have is mobile trading. Once they have that, I might jump ship altogether but until then, I will probably use both poems and vickers.
(DBS is behind on mobile banking as well.)
Thanks.

Reply
Jack says 14 years ago

Loinvestor,
Thanks for highlighting this. I actually wanted to take this opportunity try it out as I do not like the poems platform but it turns out that the vickers platform is even worse. If I am not mistaken, there is no live pricing (or I have not yet figured out where to find it).
Also, the fonts are very small and the page is also very small.
Besides the savings ($7 multiply by number of trades), it is nice to have the trading and banking account all in one place.
But given the state of the vickers platform, poems is still much better.

Reply
    lioninvestor says 14 years ago

    Hi Jack,

    Yes, think there is no live pricing. But if you login via the main Vickers platform (not from ibanking), you should be able to get the live prices.

    There is a link to open some of the pages in a new window; that should solve the small page problem.

    Reply
Intheknow says 14 years ago

don’t forget the fact that you have to keep money in the low yield savings account in order to qualify for this service.

Reply
nhyone says 15 years ago

If it’s settled by cash immediately, $18 still sounds expensive. Should be $10 or less… 🙂

Reply
    lioninvestor says 15 years ago

    Hi nhyone,

    Given that you have to pay up within 3 days for normal transactions anyway, I think the $7 savings is not bad. 🙂

    Reply
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