Complete guide to buying Singapore Treasury Bill using your CPF

What happened?

There’s been a lot of buzz recently about buying the Singapore Treasury Bill (T-bill) using CPF.

This might be because the yield on the 6-month T-bill reached 3.32% recently, above the CPF Ordinary Account rate of 2.5%.

If you have done the math and decided that you’d like to invest in the Singapore Treasury Bill using your CPF, here’s a guide on what you’d need to do. 

Guide to investing in the Singapore Treasury Bill (T-bill) with your CPF

Step 1 – Ensure you have at least S$60,000 in your CPF 

CPFIS allows you to invest your Ordinary Account (OA) and Special Account (SA) in a wide range of investments to enhance your investment savings.

Before you can make any investment on your CPFIS, you are required to have a minimum sum of S$20,000 in your Ordinary Account and S$40,000 in your Saving Account. 

If you need a primer on how your CPF interest rates are calculated, do check out our guide. 

Step 2 – Open a CPFIS account

To invest in T-bills using your CPF funds, you will be required to open CPFIS-OA account with one of the following agent banks with your CPF statement. 

• DBS Bank Ltd (DBS), 
• Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation Ltd (OCBC)
• United Overseas Bank Ltd (UOB)

As part of the CPFIS account opening process, you will be are required to complete a self-awareness questionnaire. 

To open a CPFIS account, you’d need to be at least 18 years old. Also, you can’t be a undischarged bankrupt. 

Don’t try to go to all the banks to open a CPFIS account, as you can only have a CPFIS account at any point in time!

Step 3 – Buying Singapore Treasury Bill using your CPF

According to the MAS website, you can apply in person at any branch of the CPFIS bond dealer, which is DBS/POSB, OCBC or UOB.

However, as shared by some members of the Beansprout community, you might face some difficulties when applying at your neighbourhood branch as the branch personnel might not have handled too many of such T-bill application.

After all, the T-bill only became popular amongst individual investors in recent months. So not all the branch personnel may have been trained in processing T-bill applications. 

If you want to be safe, and are willing to be wait in a queue, then you can go down to the main office of the banks to make your application.

DBS Main Branch

12 Marina Boulevard Level 3 MBFC Tower 3 Singapore 018982 
Mon – Fri: 8.30am to 4.00pm 
Sat 8.30am to 12.30pm

UOB Main Branch

80 Raffles Place, UOB Plaza, Singapore 048624  
Mon – Fri: 9.30am to 4.30pm 
Sat 9.30am to 12.30pm

OCBC Main Branch

65 Chulia Street, #01-00, OCBC Centre, Singapore 049513 
Mon – Fri: 9.00am to 4.30pm 
Sat 9.00am to 11.30am

While online cash applications for T-bills usually end one day before the auction date, the closing date for CPF applications appears to be even earlier. 

To be safe, you might want to head down to the bank 3 days before the T- bill auction date as it might take time for the bank to process your application.

You’d need to bring along your NRIC/ Passport for verification and also a copy of the self-awareness questionnaire result. 

After getting your queue number, you will be asked to fill up the application form and submit it to the teller to process the application on your behalf.

Step 4 – Wait for result of T-bill allotment

After submitting your bid for the T-bill, it’s time to await the outcome of the auction. The auction results will usually be out a few hours after the auction. 

If your application via CPFIS-OA is successful, you will be receiving the CPFIS statement from your agent bank (DBS, UOB, OCBC). 

What will Beansprout do?

Make sure you have done your analysis to understand what are the benefits and risks of investing in the T-bill using your CPF. 

If you’d like to check once again that going through this process is worthwhile, do check out our thoughts on whether you should be investing in the t-bill using your CPF. 

Did you apply for the T-bill using your CPF? Share your experience with the Beansprout community!