Changes at Shinsei Bank

Cutting back on freebies

Picture

Shinsei is breaking its product to save money

I’ve been a big fan of Shinsei Bank for a long time now (for banking, not investing or mortgages). They have an English language website, fairly decent online interface and service, foreign currency deposit accounts, free cash withdrawals from ATMs in Japan and abroad, and monthly free domestic and international transfers (depending on your status with them). I’ve had an account for about ten years now and have been very satisfied with it.

It was therefore very disappointing to see that they are planning to start charging for ATM withdrawals. Standard level customers will pay 108 yen per ATM transaction going forwards.

Going forward I think there are two possible reactions to this from Shinsei customers:

  1. find a way to reach at least the Gold level in order to keep free domestic ATM use
  2. find another bank

For 1.) above, right now the best solution I have found is to put at least 300,000 yen into a foreign currency deposit account. This should be enough to get to and maintain Gold stage status. Actually, maybe put slightly more than 300,000 yen in to account for currency fluctuations.

In terms of alternative accounts, Sony Bank looks pretty good according to this review. It seems they have free withdrawals at Seven Bank (7-11) and four free withdrawals a month with other banks, as well as a free monthly bank transfer.

I am planning to keep my Shinsei account and make sure I am Gold going forward by keeping a few thousand Euros in my account.

How about you? Any other good ways to get Gold or Platinum status easily with Shinsei? Any other decent alternative banks?

22 Responses

  1. Hi Ben
    Thanks for the great website. Regarding Shinsei, i think if you put money into their PowerBuilder 外貨積立 (min 10k JPY a month – they will automatically change it into other currency of your choice for savings), you’ll also be eligible for Gold status.
    The exchange rate and fees are not ideal but i found it better than the 300k investment or the prepaid card.

      1. I’m also interested to see if this works. I have a savings account with them and I definitely don’t want to pay those ridiculous ATM fees. Keep us updated please?

      2. Well, it is on the Step Up Program page, so I expect it works. For me the foreign currency deposit seemed like less of a hassle, so I went with that.

  2. I will also add a 300,000 yen foreign currency deposit to my Shinsei account to make sure I keep gold status. Shinsei’s foreign currency interest rates are terrible (all Japanese banks’ rates are terrible) but the price of free withdrawals and furikomi’s make up for it.

  3. This bit on Shinsei’s part sounds perfectly normal/acceptable.
    If you don’t want to meet the minimums, just go elsewhere.
    The only **apparent** alternative is Sony Bank?
    And that’s just a “maybe”?
    It sounds like Shinsei is still very competitive. Correct me if I’m wrong, but a six month emergency fund for most anyone in Japan would likely be about ¥2M. A few hundred thousand out of that in a foreign currency account seems minimal.
    If I were on their board, I’d be all for serving their real clients and pressuring others to choose–ante up and truly bank with us, or stop gaming our system and go elsewhere.
    Nothing personal, it’s just business.

    1. Oh, Sony Bank is only in there because I read a review recently 😉
      Was hoping people could suggest other good alternatives…

    2. As far as I can tell, you don’t even need to faff about with foreign currency savings. From their website:
      One of the following conditions must be satisfied to be eligible for Gold services.
      Average monthly balance of total assets with Shinsei of 2 million yen or more
      …
      …
      …
      So essentially, just leave your rainy day fund in there.

      1. Yep, that works too 🙂
        I went with the foreign currency thing because I don’t want to keep 2m in cash! Our income situation is pretty stable compared to our needs, so we don’t need much of an emergency fund (this will be different for everyone).

  4. After 10 years, our family will part ways with Shinsei Bank. It’s ridiculous they start charging these unnecessary ATM fees. We rather use Japan Post Bank or another internet bank for receiving and saving money on a monthly basis. There is no reason to stay with Shinsei longer.

  5. If you have 1,000,000 in savings or PowerYokin, you get Gold. I keep that amount in PowerYokin as a rainy day fund. It is also useful because Gold gives you a handful of free bank transfers per month, whereas Standard only gives you one.

  6. Hi, why are you not a big fan of Shinsei for mortgages? Are their rates higher?

    1. Basically, yes. They do mortgages in English, they are pretty foreign resident friendly, but you pay more.
      The best rates when I was looking around for mortgages a couple of years ago were the small regional banks.

      1. Hi, do you know if there is a site that compares mortgage rates in Japan like bankrate.com?

      3. I got a mortgage offered from both Resona and UFJ and they were both the same rate of 0.775% which is so cheap.

      4. is that including danshin hoken? I was under the impression that there was more or less a floor on how low they could go which bottoms out at around .6% on the hendou kinri(shinsei offers that and mufg .625, but both of these depend on how much 優遇 you are getting which is based on income and other hidden factors they won’t tell you)?
        On kakaku.com I looked at the cheapest and noticed that it stated that you can get danshin hoken but that changes the rate. I visited one of the housing developers seminars and they were saying the rate is something like .3% but is included in that .6 that mufg and whatnot are offering

      5. My mortgage is 0.5% floating rate (but I think rates have gone up slightly since I got it).

  7. I was their customer for years and years, always with gold status, but the age of the design and functionality of their website was showing very very long teeth by now…
    So when I wanted to change my name to my legal alias, and they simply said they can’t do it because their own internal rules, I decided enough was enough, and pushed all the money to my Rakuten account.
    Modern design there, gives me 7 free atm transfers and 5 free furikomi every month which is more than I need, looks up receivers information when doing furikomi, acts as a sweep account for my Rakuten Securities, can automatically transfer funds every month… useful feature list that I immediately started using made me think why I didn’t swap years ago…

    1. Great stuff. Were they okay with you using your alias on the account? I’ll have to check them out.

      1. No problems with the alias, took a few months of lazy progress but I think now all my finance and government -related names are harmonised (except resident card/drivers license).
        The alias thing might be shinsei only, I have yet to run into another japanese bank where this would be a problem.
        My ex actually has a katakana name with shinsei, this alias rule came out in 2014 I think (foreigners HAVE to register with all romaji).

  8. I like the way the value depositors as ” gold” “silver” “platinum” it shows where the real value of things lies.I