Corporate Investment > Investment Services > Fixed Income

Fixed Income

Treasury Bills

What are Treasury Bills?
Treasury Bills (T Bills) are a savings product similar to Fixed Deposits.

How does it work?
T Bills don’t pay out interest. Rather the interest is included in the price discount.

Eg 1 year tenor
If you placed $100 in a 3% fixed deposit, you would collect $103 at the end of a year. A 1yr T Bill however would be sold to you at $97 and you would collect $100.

Eg 3 month tenor
If you placed $100 in a 3% fixed deposit, you would collect $100.75 at the end of the 3 months period. A 3 mths bill however would be sold to you at 99.252 ($992.5) and you would collect 100 ($1000) at maturity.

What are the key differences between Treasury Bills & Fixed Deposits?

  TREASURY BILLS FIXED DEPOSITS
Who pays the interest? Singapore Government Banks
If I break my contract, will I get any interest? Yes, most of it. Eg if you were buying a 3%, you would probably get back 2.9% if you sold back a few weeks later. If you break contract, usually lose all interests
Any minimum Size? 1,000 Usually $30k and above
What charges? At Phillip, you pay no commission or clearance fees. We will deduct a spread from the yield that is given to you. If you have no account with that bank, you need to open a new a/c which requires minimum balance and may incur fees


How do I buy or sell?
Online in our POEMS website. But we have two requirements: You need to open a Cash Management account and agree to receiving contracts via e-mail.

How do I make payment?
A Cash Management account is like a savings account and it is from this that we deduct funds from. So prior to buying, you must ensure that there are sufficient funds to cover the purchase.

Customers can transfer money into their Cash Management account by submitting cash or a cashier’s order at our main office on the 6th floor of the Phillip Investors Centre at Raffles City (Tower B).

Funds can also be transferred through the ATM machine into your Cash Management account via Electronic Payment of Shares (EPS).

Alternatively, payment can be made using cheques addressed to “Phillip Securities Pte Ltd”. Cheques must be submitted 2 days before purchase date to allow for sufficient clearing period.

How to withdraw?
Clients can log onto the POEMS website with their password and login. Click onto the “Account Management” header, where you’ll be shown a list of functions, one of which is “Withdrawal of funds”.

There are 3 methods of getting your money.


• By Cheque. Clients can personally collect cheque from the cashier counter at Raffles City , clients can instruct their Trading Representatives to do a quick cheque deposit into their bank accounts, or have the cheque posted to their mailing address.
• Funds can be directly credited into POSB/DBS bank accounts. (only these 2 banks are applicable for direct credicting).
• Telegraphic Transfer (handling fee of $10.50), useful for overseas clients.

Others


What’s the difference between a T Bill & a Bond?
Main difference lies in length of tenor – T Bills have tenors of maximum 1 year and below. Bonds tenors are 2 years and above.

Do I receive a coupon for T Bill?
No, Treasury bills are zero-coupon products because interest is paid off one time at maturity. There are no periodic interest payments during the time T bill is held.

Why are all transactions done online, not on paper?
To cut down on operational costs so that the savings can be passed on to the end customer like yourself. Automating the entire process minimizes transaction costs.

Am I guaranteed I will be allocated the specific quantity of T bills that I placed an order for?
No, it depends on the balance of T bills Phillip Securities has available at the time of purchase.

Why don’t I buy other government treasury bills instead? Eg. Indonesia interest rates over 11%.
Different governments have different credit risks dependent on the political and economic stability of the countries. Countries that offer government securities with higher risks have to compensate the investor with higher returns.