HSBC Premier Checking $500 Bonus – Requires Deposit Of $100,000+

Offer at a glance

• Maximum bonus amount: $500
• Availability: Nationwide
• Direct deposit required: No
• Additional requirements: Keep $100,000 or more in funds for six months
• Hard/soft pull: Soft pull, chex systems inquiry
• Credit card funding: Unknown
• Monthly fees: $50, waived if account balance of $100,000 or more
• Early account termination fee: None, bonus is clawed back if closed within six months
• Expiration date: July 3rd, 2014

The Offer

Direct link to offer

• Open a HSBC Premier relationship with a balance of $100,000 or more in new funds and receive a $500 bonus
  • This $500 bonus can be converted into 50,000 HSBC Premier World MasterCard® Rewards Program Bonus Points if you also sign up for a HSBC Premier World MasterCard® credit card

 

The Fine Print

• Valid from May 12th till July 3rd, 2014
• You’ll receive a notification within 90 days of completing the requirements
• $100,000 in funds must be added within 30 days of account opening
• $100,000 balance must be kept in the account for six consecutive months from the date of account opening
• Bonus will be paid directly into the account within 4-6 weeks of fulfilling all of the requirements
• Limit of one bonus per customer
• All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them

Avoiding Fees

There is no early account termination fee associated with this account, but the account must be kept open for a minimum of six months otherwise the bonus will be taken back. There is a monthly fee of $50, although this is waived if you have a balance of $100,000 or higher (which is required to fulfill the terms of the promotion).

Our Verdict

If you deposited this money into a different rewards checking account you’d be able to easily get 1% or higher, this is annual return of $1,000. Because you need to keep $100,000 in the Premier checking account you are effectively missing out on $500 in interest.

The HSBC Premier checking account does come with it’s own interest rate though, unfortunately it’s only 0.01% (which would result in $5 in interest over the six months). Their savings account does earn 0.15% which would result in $75 in interest over the six months.

It’s definitely not worth applying for the credit card as well, as this will result in a hard credit pull. You can easily get 50,000 points+ from other card issuers without a $100,000 balance requirement

The only way this offer would be worth it is if you could fund your account with a large credit card deposit that didn’t code as a cash advance, unfortunately we’re unsure if this is possible at the moment.This means at best you’re making a profit of $75, personally I’d recommend signing up for one of the other much better new checking bonuses that are available which have less strict requirements. We’ve added this to our nationwide checking promo page.

Direct link to offer | Screenshot of offer