For a start, there are many brokerages in Singapore that offer access to the S-REITs and other companies listed on the SGX. We have the traditional brokerage platforms like DBS Vickers, Fundsupermart, POEMS, Interactive Brokers and more. In recent years, there are also new players in the market such as Tiger Brokers and Moomoo providing competitive commission rates for investors. You can easily find the latest commission rates on their respective websites as they do change from time to time. The various brokerages may also offer promotional rates for certain periods as well.
Another area to look out for before setting up your brokerage account is to decide if you would want to open an account that is CDP-linked or a custodian account.
A CDP-linked account is one whereby the stocks you purchased are held under your name and will be stored in your CDP account managed by SGX. On the other hand, for a custodian account, the stocks you purchased are held under the name of your custodian which could be for example, DBS Bank or iFAST, so they are acting like the legal owner of the shares and holding the shares on your behalf.
Both a CDP-linked account and a custodian account has its pros and cons. But our focus today would be on dividend investing. When it comes to dividend investing, one of the advantages of having a CDP-linked account is that the dividends are automatically credited to your bank account.
This is because CDP has the Direct Crediting Service (DCS) which allows you to credit the dividend payments directly into your designated bank account. With the automated crediting of dividends, it makes things even more convenient and you can just withdraw the money from your bank account directly if you are living on dividends for your expenses! Whereas if you are investing for dividends using a custodian account, you will have the additional step of manually transferring the dividends payment every quarter or every half-yearly from your brokerage account to your bank account.
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