You will be able to explain how locking part of your savings protects it from a scammer who gets into your banking app.
Picture the worst case from module 6. Malware has got onto your phone, read your one-time passwords and logged in to your banking app while you slept. Or a scammer on the phone has talked you into handing over access. Either way, someone else is inside your account and can move whatever is there.
Now run the same night again, except that weeks earlier you locked most of your savings, and nothing inside the app can lift that lock. The scammer sees your full balance on the screen and finds that most of it won't move. You wake up down whatever was in your everyday balance, which hurts, while the bulk of your savings sits exactly where you left it.
That difference is what this lesson is about.
Singapore's major banks offer a way to lock a chosen amount of your money so that it can't be transferred out through digital banking. You'll see it called Money Lock at some banks and by other names at others. The idea is the same everywhere.
You pick an amount. That amount stays in your account, in your name, and it still counts as your money. What changes is that nobody can send it anywhere through the banking app or internet banking. Not a scammer, not malware, and not you, at least not without an extra step.
Locking money is easy and can usually be done in the app in a minute or two. That's deliberate. The bank wants you to be able to protect your money quickly.
Getting locked money back out is meant to be slow and awkward. Banks require extra verification before they release it, and the most common form is something a remote scammer can't do, such as visiting a branch in person with your identification. The exact steps differ by bank, and some offer other in-person or higher-security routes.
Think about what that means for a scammer. Everything they do happens at a distance: through your phone, through a fake login page, through a voice on a call. A lock that needs you to physically show up blocks all of those routes at once. Even if they control your phone completely, they can't walk into a branch as you.
It also protects you from yourself in a different way. If a fake police officer is pressing you to move your savings to a "safe account" right now, the lock adds a delay. You'd have to go to the bank, and by the time you're standing at the counter, you've had time to think, and the bank staff may recognise what's happening.
The lock only helps if the right amount is behind it. Too little and a scammer still empties most of your savings. Too much and you'll be making trips to a branch every time a bill arrives, which means you'll soon give up on it.
A sensible way to decide is to split your money into two parts. The first part, which you leave free, covers a month or two of everyday spending, upcoming bills and anything you pay by transfer, such as rent or insurance premiums. The second part is everything else, usually your emergency fund and longer-term savings, and that's the part you lock.
Here is an illustration. Jun Hao, 31, has S$24,000 in his savings account. He spends around S$2,500 a month and pays a S$1,800 bill every quarter. He keeps S$6,000 free, enough for two months of spending plus the quarterly bill with some room to spare, and locks S$18,000. If his phone were ever compromised, the most a scammer could move is S$6,000, and the lower transfer limit you'll set in lesson 7.3, Transfer limits, alerts and the emergency freeze, would cut that further.
Your own split depends on how you spend. Before a large payment, like a renovation or a wedding, you can release part of the lock ahead of time through your bank's process and lock whatever is left over once the bill is paid.
Each bank names and runs its version a little differently. Some let you lock money within your existing savings account. Others move it into a separate locked account or a sub-account. The minimum amount, which accounts are eligible, whether locked money still earns interest, and the exact release steps all vary.
So before you set it up, read your own bank's page on it. Search for the feature on your bank's official website, or look in the security or account settings of your banking app. If you can't find it, call the hotline on the back of your card and ask whether they have a way to lock savings against digital transfers.
Check one more thing while you're there: how a release actually works at your bank, and how long it takes. You don't want to find out on the day you need the money.
You now have what you need to make a decision for your own accounts. The activity asks you to settle on a number and then put the lock in place.
Decide how much of your savings to lock, then set up your bank's Money Lock or equivalent feature.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).