Call me boring, risk-averse, whatever - but I've always kept a big chunk of my money in time deposits. By lending my cash to the bank for a set period of time, I receive a higher interest rate than I would with a normal savings account.
Yet with deposit rates close to zero and at their lowest since 1986, I decided to find out more about 'high-yield products'.
It turned out that my aversion to risk wss not uncommon among Hong Kongers. 'Although some believe the stock market should pick up soon, the majority is sceptical about recovery,' Dao Heng Bank's head of consumer banking Sunny Cheung Yiu-tong said.
For such sceptics, Mr Cheung suggested a compromise. Products known as option-linked deposits have been around for about a year and are proving popular. Such products combine low-risk deposits with an underlying asset - stocks, indices, currencies, interest rates - which are riskier but offer potentially higher returns.
International Bank of Asia (IBA) executive vice-president Betty Brow suggested a deposit product linked to shares in HSBC, a 'solid, blue-chip company whose share price is relatively stable' and closed at HK$83.50 per share on Friday. If I agreed to deposit HK$98,400 in two weeks (March 14), then I'm guaranteed HK$100,000 back on 30 April, making a profit of HK$1,600 in 47 days. This represented a healthy annualised return of 12.4 per cent.
What's the catch? If, two days before the maturity date, HSBC shares fall below 95 per cent of the HK$83.50 strike price we agreed on - or HK$79.30 - then I am obliged to buy the shares at the strike price, although the market price is less than that.