Combank announces attractive benefits for foreign currency account holders

Commercial Bank of Ceylon has announced attractive new benefits for holders of foreign currency accounts with immediate effect.

The customers who open new foreign currency accounts would be eligible to receive these benefits, which include an international debit card free of charge, free registration for Combank Digital and a waiver of the first year’s fee for the Combank Digital Online Banking facility, the bank said.

The offer is valid for personal foreign currency accounts (PFAS) as well as FC Plus accounts at Commercial Bank.

Interest on balances in FC Plus accounts is calculated on a daily balance and credited to customers’ accounts monthly, enabling them to earn interest on interest and resulting in their foreign currency savings growing faster than other foreign currency accounts and earning a higher return than overseas deposit rates, the bank said.

FC Plus accounts can be opened with a minimum deposit of 5,000 in any of four foreign currencies, the US dollar, euro, Sterling pound or Australian dollar and progressively higher rates of interest are paid on account balances that are within the slabs of up to 50,000, 50,001 to 100,000 and above 100,001.

A PFA is a special account, which can be opened in US dollars, Sterling pounds, Swiss francs, Japanese yen, Australian dollars, Canadian dollars, Hong Kong dollars, euros, Singapore dollars, New Zealand dollars, Chinese yuan, Swedish kroners, Norwegian kroner and Danish kroner.

Commercial Bank also recently launched a unique investment plan that enables Sri Lankans earning foreign currency to save fixed monthly amounts and enjoy attractive interest rates to build savings of US $ 10,000 upwards or the equivalent in three other currencies, in a relatively short period.

Named ‘Millionaire Investment Plan in Foreign Currency’, the account is modelled on the bank’s already successful ‘Millionaire Investment Plan’ and offers interest rates that are higher than competing products in the market for tenures of three, four or five years on savings in US dollars, euros, Sterling pounds and Australian dollars.

The new plan makes it possible for customers to plan how much they want to save within a selected period based on the corresponding fixed monthly deposit they can comfortably commit to and build an investment in US dollars/euros/pounds/australian dollars to the value of 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 100,000 or 250,000 in any one of these denominations at maturity.

Commercial Bank also offers Forex Plus, a competitive foreign currency fixed deposit (FD) scheme that offers interest rates of up to 9.5 percent per annum for tenures of up to five years on foreign currency term deposits in the same international currencies.