HSBC service

On Sunday, July 31, I was in Plaza Indonesia's Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf cafe. In front of the cafe there was a HSBC promotion booth offering the chance for Premier clients to win a Jaguar.

I approached and was referred to a female attendant. I asked her about investing hundreds of millions of rupiah for three months or less. She advised that I try Manulife's FlexInvest, a money market fund that she said offered competitive returns compared with bank interest rates. I agreed to invest and she asked me to fill out an application form. She also gave me some gifts.

In the evening I opened up and researched the fund on the website, which stated that the fund's total performance was 4.55 percent and had a monthly rate of 0.61 percent, but there was a management fee of up to 1.5 percent and a custodian fee of 0.25 percent. For my investment it is 1.25 percent.

If I were to invest in the fund, I would lose if compared to a short-term bank time deposit, even though the woman at the HSBC booth said I would earn more through the fund than with a time deposit. Perhaps over two or three years that would be correct, but not over three months. I have not transferred any funds to the HSBC.

HSBC lures prospective clients with expensive gifts but forgets to make money for them. What is important is commissions for banks. I wonder with an investment of Rp 1.269 trillion, how many people were lured into investing, and how much in commissions do the bank and fund manager make?

HIMAWAN D. SUSASTRA, Jakarta