Baby Bonus 101

Managing agents for your CDA

For Aug 1, 2008, there will be two managing agents for CDAs. They are OCBC Bank and Standard Chartered Bank. You can choose one of them to open and maintain your CDA.



No minimum sum

There's no minimum deposit required to open and maintain a CDA, and there is no charge even if the amount in the CDA is zero.



Use of CDA

Use the CDA savings to pay for the fees for any of your children who attend the approved institutions registered with MCYS. These include childcare centres, kindergartens and special education schools registered with the MOE, as well as early-intervention programmes registered with the National Council of Social Service.



You can also use it to buy Medishield or Medisave-approved piravate integrated plans for all your children, as well as for medical-related expenses like consultation fees, treatment fees and prescription costs incurred at health care institutions. Withdrawal from a CDA is done through Interbank Giro. To enable you to pay an approved institution, you'll need to fill in an application form for Interbank Giro for your CDA at the approved institution. Some institutions may require you to pay in cash until the Giro process is approved. Please check with them when you submit your Interbank Giro form.

Nets
You can start paying approved institutions from a CDA through Nets from August 2008. Both OCBC Bank and Standard Chartered Bank will issue eachtrustee a CDA card to enable payments through Nets at approved institutions. This CDA card can only be used for payments at approved institutions.

PSEA
In the January of the year that your child turns seven, the remaining balance in his CDA will be transferred to his Post-Secondary Education Account (PSEA). If you have not co-saved to enjoy the matching government contribution up the cap in the CDA, you can continue to do so in the PSEA until the eve of your child's 18th birthday. The total matching government contribution is up to $6,000 for the second child, and up to $12,000 each for the third and fourth child. You can use the money in the PSEA to pay for fees for post-secondary education in Singapore, either for your child or his siblings.

Get answer
If you have questions, call the Baby Bonus hot 1800 253-7707, or visit www.babybonus.gov.sg. To find out more about the Post-Secondary Education Account, visit www.moe.gov.sg.

You may log on to www.ocbc.com/babybonus for information on the CDA managed by OCBC Bank.