RetireJapan

Prestia Gold has a few benefits, such as free ATMs in Japan, worldwide ATM withdrawals (not that great a rate though), and discount or free international transfers.

We need to keep 10 million with them to keep the Gold status, and with cash deposit rates at rock bottom so I don't want to go that route. They also have some mutual funds, but the offerings are slim, and buy-in fees around 2-3%. Plus annual expense fees of .5-1%.

So, what to do? Have any of you found a decent fund at Prestia?

We do have 3 SBI NISA accounts, and I am tempted to give up the Gold and move the money into SBI in order to get a better return. We no longer send money overseas, so I am not sure that benefit really holds much value for us these days.

I actually have Prestia but find the benefits to be so abysmal that I'm considering making my Rakuten account my main. With Money Bridge, Rakuten actually gives 0.1% interest which while basically nothing is still 100x more than what Prestia gives. Rakuten also offers X number of free withdrawals and bank transfers based on your rank with them.
I'm still new to the investing game but there's literally nothing Prestia can give in mutual funds that is better than what you can find on Rakuten Securities anyways so unless you have a very compelling reason to stay on Prestia, I'd sooner just move to SBI.

I fully second the stance of both of you.

Being a Prestia Gold member myself, I basically only use it for the free SWIFT transfers. Having recently realized that the transfer to IBKR isn't actually an overseas transfer, but only a domestic non-resident transfer, the fees saved are also slimmer. Which I could do that online with them....

My impression is that all investment, savings, FX products are overpriced one way or the other. However I know some friends who make use of the good relationship status for taking out a myhome loan at fair conditions.

In any event, I wonder how long Prestia wouldn't realize that one falls under the threshold. My impression is that they basically switch on the status once conditions are met. Would be interesting to read experience from the opposite direction "downwards".

I'm under the impression some people moved to prestia after shinsei stopped just giving away free transfers at their base level.

I had an account with both at one point(only because I originally had a citibank account for the credit card through that). Eventually I found that prestia was no longer affiliated with the card and what was worse, they were charging regular maintenance fees because there wasn't enough money in the account to reach a certain level. What a joke.

As upset as people may be that shinsei stopped offering services that no-one else was offering, the targets you need to reach are still a lot more reasonable than with prestia. 1mil in the bank for the transfers and atm stuff. Or you can have a moderate amount of foreign funds or a couple other options I don't remember.

Or you can just go for one of the netbanks if you don't need the physical bankfronts. Any way I've looked at it, Prestia is just a worse shinsei, but I'm always open to being corrected if I missed something? Also definitely don't do investments at either of them, what a joke they are