18 Month Term Deposit 2.75% | Page 2 | Alterna Bank | Discussion forum

Norman1 said

Thanks, Saver-Mom. That piece of the puzzle is very significant: One has to be on-boarded anew at a branch to obtain Alterna Bank's in-branch products.

That suggests that Alterna Bank has two "divisions" with the same marketing banner "Alterna Bank".

Others in the same situation have the wisdom to give their online division a different banner than their in-branch operations. CIBC uses "CIBC" and "Simplii Financial" banners. Sunova Credit Union uses "Sunova" and "Hubert Financial" banners.

Essentially, the special term deposit offers are from "Alterna Bank (bricks & mortar)". Those of us who on-boarded online are customers of "Alterna Bank (online)"!

What we see on Alterna Bank's web site is a mash of offerings from both "Alterna Bank (bricks & mortar)" and "Alterna Bank (online)".   

It's not quite the same - this is an offer from Alterna Bank, their online banking subsidiary. Alterna Credit Union and Savings, the parent, has the branches. You can open up Alterna Bank products in branches, just not do transactions (which makes sense). You can't do anything with a Simplii Financial or Tangerine account in a CIBC or Scotiabank branch.

Cheers,
Doug

Norman, now you're getting it, I think, with one exception: the service charges they list for the non-"e" accounts are, I suspect, made to mirror those of the credit union. They may not be able to open "e" accounts in-branch, but I don't think a separate profile is created.

A good comparison would be either HSBC Bank Canada's former HSBC Direct (see image below) and the current Motive Financial division of Canadian Western Bank. In each, branch staff could not access the Online Savings Account (later renamed the Direct Savings Account and Advance Savings Account, before being demised) and Motive Savings accounts, but the same customer profile was used for both branch-originated and online-originated accounts. We could also take rent automatically from Online Savings Accounts.

Sometimes staff would open separate profiles for the same person, but was frowned upon, and created a real mess for trying to update someone's address as you'd need to go in and update the profile several times - hence why address and customer data change inputs were outsourced to the HSBC Global Service Centre in Guangzhou province, China, whereby Canadian branch staff filled in a PDF-fillable address and data change form that bore all profile numbers and required customer signatures and then sent via overnight courier (HSBC uses Dynamex, now a unit of TransForce) to the Domestic Service Centre in either Vancouver (West) or Markham (East) that serviced the branch. The respective DSC would then fax, or scan and e-mail, batches of these forms in the overnight hours to the Guangzhou GSC for processing. Generally, it took 2-3 business days from the date the customer signed the form and branch staff sent it in the overnight courier bag for the change(s) to be processed and the accounts updated. Sometimes, forms would get "lost" so I went to the "extra step" of photocopying the forms I sent in and diarising them for 2-3 days out to see if everything got updated (this wasn't required, though, but I felt was customer-centric).

There you have it: the total workflow for an address change at HSBC. 🙂

Cheers,
Doug

Full and Fair Disclosure: I own common shares in HSBC Bank Canada's parent company, HSBC Holdings plc, and TFI International Inc., which owns TransForce Company and Dynamex (courier to most of the major Canadian banks and many Canadian credit unions).

Here's a link showing that digital Alterna Bank operates a branch in Gatineau as well as through 33 Alterna Savings locations.

https://www.alternabank.ca/Personal/EverydayBanking/Access/Branches/

Loonie said
I like the "Fair Disclosure" part, even if we have no way of verifying it.

Thanks.

I know some on this forum, including you, like for other members to disclose potential conflicts or affiliations. I tend to take a very liberal view of that but, that being said, like to go "above the call of duty" here.

Although not specifically required, below are my holdings as at this date from my TFSA and non-registered investment accounts, respectively. My Locked-In RRSP and RRSP have only HISAs and a broad-based S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF (from BlackRock's iShares).

Alternate URL: https://yadi.sk/i/FqYnffLQ3WeERK

Alternate URL: https://yadi.sk/i/2lEo1ZJK3WeETh

Pax = Peace. Latin. the first language of the Western churches, as found on many Christmas cards. "Peace be to Shakespeare".  

Ah, okay, I've seen people use "pax" as an Internet chat screen name or forum username sometimes. It definitely sounds Latin, hence why I asked. Thanks for sharing, Loonie!

As an aside: Peter, you'll note my shareable URLs from Yandex.Disk. I originally tried to include those "alternate URLs" as "images" from an external URL, but said that they couldn't be found even though they are set to public. Any ideas?

I don't mind uploading my images, but it also saves you space if some users host them externally. 🙂

Cheers,
Doug

Bill said
Here's a link showing that digital Alterna Bank operates a branch in Gatineau as well as through 33 Alterna Savings locations.

https://www.alternabank.ca/Personal/EverydayBanking/Access/Branches/

Loonie said
yes, it says that, but it doesn't work that way exactly.
I went into my local Alterna Savings branch not too long after I opened my Alterna Bank online savings account and they were no help at all, said they couldn't do anything in relation to my Alterna Bank account.  

Others have reported similar experiences. I think the fine print at the bottom of that Alterna Bank page explains the discrepencies:

*Alterna Bank in Gatineau, Quebec and Alterna Savings do not offer digital products …

It looks like Alterna Bank has "digital" products and "branch" products. Both are shown in their Service Fees charts. I suspect that if one has an Alterna Bank account from the "Branch Banking" category of the chart, then one can access the account at the Alterna Bank branch or an Alterna Savings branch. Those of us who have one of the "eAccounts" don't have access to the account at those branches.

That's why I think Alterna Bank has a product "wall", if not a separate division, for the online products.