Alterna Transfers | Page 2 | Alterna Bank | Discussion forum

This may be a stupid question, but if I did a pull from Alterna instead of a push, does the limits still apply?

I mean if I want to create a link through my PC account and pull funds from Alterna, does the $25,000 daily limit apply?

The reason why I ask is I was tempted to switch funds back for 2 months for the PC promo of 2.25%. But if I have to do multiple transfers its obvious I will lose whatever gain I could make especially the first month. The 1.95% is really not a bad rate considering it has no end-date like PC.

I linked Alterna at the tangerine end. I believe I can pull more that the 25,000 daily limit into tangerine. In a couple days I hope to pull 50,000 from Alterna at the tangerine end. Does anyone know if Alterna would stop it if I'm not initiating at the Alterna end?

Hello all,

Still a relative newcomer to highinterestsavings, and absolutely appreciate the valuable input/info from one and all

I am considering Alterna eSavings, and am wondering about their 'Promo code (if applicable)' from Alterna's 'Getting You Started' page...would this be similar to Tangerine, where one could use a 'code' from an established customer, to the benefit of the established customer and the prospective customer??

Thanks in advance...

MarkFog said

I mean if I want to create a link through my PC account and pull funds from Alterna, does the $25,000 daily limit apply?

The reason why I ask is I was tempted to switch funds back for 2 months for the PC promo of 2.25%. But if I have to do multiple transfers its obvious I will lose whatever gain I could make especially the first month. The 1.95% is really not a bad rate considering it has no end-date like PC.

It shouldn't as PC Financial is set up to accept direct deposits (a.k.a. incoming EFTs) and they can't control those transaction limits.

I misread your post, thinking you meant "pull" funds from PC Financial to Alterna Bank. In your case, yes the PC Financial transaction limits apply as it's a transaction done from PC Financial (whether sending or receiving). To do the transaction in one shot, you'd have to either:
(a) "Push" funds from your Alterna Bank account to your PC Financial account. The downside of this is the debit to your Alterna Bank account would likely be instant and the credit to your PC Financial account would be dependent on when it gets posted at PC Financial's back-office (which is CIBC). Typically, no more than 1-2 business days, assuming you "pushed" funds from Alterna before cut-off time on a business day; or,
(b) Deposit a cheque drawn on your Alterna Bank account (if a chequing account) to your PC Financial account via the PC Financial mobile app or at a PC Financial/CIBC ABM.

Downside to either is the lost interest for 1-2 days but should still be more advantageous than transferring money in to PC Financial, which also takes an extra day to post transactions to your PC Financial savings account.

Tip: You basically just have to make sure to link your bank accounts on both sides and then you can use whichever method is most advantageous each time.

Cheers,
Doug

Loonie said

All FIs have ways of limiting withdrawals. This is particularly true with cash withdrawals, but can apply to any.

A while ago I needed to take something under $5000 in cash from TD. (I just needed to walk it to the other end of the block to cover a pre-authorized debit at another bank, as there wasn't enough time to wait for it to clear through any other means.) They hummed and hawed quite a bit before they finally let me have the money. It didn't matter at all that they knew exactly who I was both by ID and by personal recognition or that I had well beyond the money required to cover it in my accounts or that this was not really a lot of money, for a bank. I had apparently exceeded their withdrawal limits. They let me have it, presumably so as not to antagonize me to the point where I might take ALL my business down the street. There is probably something about this in the fine print somewhere in the account holder agreement.

Yes, it's your money, but not entirely. You have chosen to deposit it in a bank. You did not hide it under the mattress or put it in your household safe. You have, in effect, loaned it to the bank, even if they don't pay you any interest. And they do with it what they will. They also make the rules. And governments and regulators make another level of rules. And, at a more extreme level, the International Monetary Fund makes more rules. Remember the line-ups in Greece a year or so ago as people tried to get their money out of the bank but couldn't due to imposed restrictions?

I suspect that most people would be quite surprised to learn of the low reserves that banks maintain relative to deposits. It runs somewhere around 10%, depending on the bank. You can find this information in their annual reports, which are typically online. I happen to have looked at CIBC's recently, which was around 10%.
At one time this was regulated, but that was removed quite a while ago (although the requirements weren't particularly high). I must confess I don't really understand the system that is in place now.
Some cautious-minded commentators have suggested that 20% reserves would be reasonable. However, the reserves are never going to be such that everyone who wants their money out on a particular day is going to be able to get it all, if demand is extremely high.
Banks must protect themselves against that eventuality because our system of fractional banking assumes low reserves. You have deposited your money, but it isn't actually there any more. It has gone on a long complicated journey, and, to quote from another genre, "It's 10pm, and do you know where your money is?" No, you don't. Nobody does, exactly, because yours is all mixed in with mine and everyone else's. However, you can get some clues by reading the bank's annual reports. At this point, you might find yourself upset, because you will see that they are invested in things that you would never consider investing in by yourself as they do not meet your risk tolerance. You hope they work out well enough that you get your money back, with promised interest, if any.

So, I don't find these limits unusually troublesome. It's a sign of caution, and, as has been said, they are a smallish institution, so that a 10% reserve would be much less in absolute dollars than 10% at, for example, TD. In this case, size offers flexibility.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see tighter limits in general in future. We can now move large amounts of money quickly, due to the arrival of so many online options. If the end result is that a lot of savvy customers figure out the advantages of so doing, this could, theoretically, cause instability in these FIs. They wouldn't like that!

I'm not suggesting that anything as dire as what happened in Greece is about to happen here, but neither am I saying it couldn't. Folks there were surprised and horrified. It does illustrate clearly that, ultimately, we don't call the shots.

It's something to be aware of. Personally, I would not be concerned about the Alterna limits unless I could foresee that I was going to need to make large urgent transfers. In that case, I would look for a bank that had more liberal limits, which would probably be a large bank. Corporations move vast sums daily (on paper), so we know it can be done, but that is a different kind of scenario and has money going both ways whereas you are only anticipating withdrawals.

I would want any FI into which I deposit my money to be stable. One way for them to try to ensure that is to have these kinds of limits. I would rather they didn't run out of money in the short run.

I am not too concerned about the 4 day hold on transfers-out. It's a nuisance, but I think we may see more of this in future too. We are all learning, and the banks are certainly learning, that there is no such thing as 100% fool-proof security. The hold period allows them time to notice unusual patterns of activity and diagnose them before things go haywire.

I think they're being cautious, and that's OK with me.

Loonie, in your case, if you had cleared funds, banks limit cash withdrawals as they are maintaining less cash in branches as the more cash they maintain, that's essentially "dead money" they can't lend out in terms of their capital ratios.

If you don't need cash, a tip: ask them for a free bank draft in lieu of cash (all banks have to offer this). Trouble is, if you just ask for a bank draft, they'll charge you a fee. If you ask for cash and they don't want to provide it, they'll either offer you a bank draft in lieu of cash at no charge or you can ask for one.

When I worked for a bank, I gladly offered bank drafts in lieu of cash to clients at no charge if they were just taking it to another bank to put into their or someone else's account, along with my business card with a direct line in case their bank needed to verify the bank draft (to waive the hold period), any time they needed, say, $2500 or more. Most were appreciative and the cost of the bank draft to the bank is mere pennies.

A lot of it comes down to managing the branch's cash supply and a branch's typically includes the cash stocked in the ABM(s), as well as foreign currency holdings. The ABMs typically need to be well stocked, especially on long weekends. And, typically, branches can only order cash once per week so a few large, unexpected withdrawals can deplete the branch's cash holdings very quickly. With that said, it's not so much the banks not wanting to provide customers with large amounts of cash, it's about the unexpected nature of these large cash withdrawals. If a small business client or maybe a hotel owner had a specific need for regular weekly cash withdrawals, simply speaking with their banking representative a week in advance to special order it for them is all that's required. Additionally, most banks offer a service where the business owner can directly order it from their cash supply centre and then contract an armoured car service to directly deliver it for them.

Cheers,
Doug

Loonie said

…I did consider asking for a bank draft (free because I'm a senior) but was afraid the other bank might put a hold on it and it was too late in the day to monkey around. The receiving bank (in this case CIBC) recently put a 5-day hold on a draft from a credit union.

Counterfeiters can be quite good these days. Years ago, I read about one scammer who was buying used computer parts and paying with bogus Bank of Montreal drafts.

One victim took the bounced draft he had accepted to a Bank of Montreal branch and presented it to a teller. The fake was so good that the teller didn't believe it was counterfeit until she checked the serial number and amount against the bank's list of issued drafts!

Loonie said

I can see that it's very complicated from the bank's point of view. What you have said supports my view that it's not really "your" money once you deposit it in the bank. It's only yours under certain conditions and is not the same as putting it under the mattress.

I did consider asking for a bank draft (free because I'm a senior) but was afraid the other bank might put a hold on it and it was too late in the day to monkey around. The receiving bank (in this case CIBC) recently put a 5-day hold on a draft from a credit union.

CIBC is the worst for putting holds, from my experience. They have really low "access to deposited funds" limits even for good clients (anecdotal reports suggest $1000 might be the highest limit they offer) and their system defaults to placing a hold on all non-cash deposits, unless you specifically ask about it (which most people don't know to do as they, perhaps rightly, assume bank drafts aren't subject to holds by default) rather than other banks which either require the CSR to place a hold if the deposit is over their deposit limit or requires a supervisor approval to not place a hold if over their limit. However, if you know their rules and policies, having the receiving bank - even CIBC - verify a bank draft, does work.

Hope that helps,
Doug

Loonie said

Yes, I figured that might be the issue.
However, if they want to be helpful, as Doug tried to be with his customers, they can be. A phone call will do the trick.
In this case, I had a very long history of about 30 years with both of the branches in question, never an NSF or overdraft, and they ought to have been able to sort this out with a draft, but I couldn't depend on them to do so.
I think they ought to advertise their cash withdrawal limits more clearly. I can't ever remember seeing them posted except in relation to ATM.

It's not something they have to advertise but I agree...I wish more CSRs would tell people in advance that if they need more than a certain amount, to call in a week before and "special order" it. There were sometimes some people had legitimate needs for it (such as to pay a contractor for house renovations or to purchase a vehicle in a private sale) and I'd often provide it but then tell them that, going forward, they need to order it ahead and make a note in the customer's profile that I'd advised them of that on a certain date. (Although, admittedly, while not technically money laundering, I always had a problem with people paying contractors in cash to, say, renovate their kitchen because they "got a better deal," presumably because the contractor only declares a certain portion of it as small business income. That's actually a larger problem than even the CRA thinks, I suspect, the whole "underground legitimate economy" and is one reason I can see lowering income taxes and raising consumption taxes, which can't be as easily avoided. However...even in those examples, it's not immediately clear to me they'd be any more effective.)

Cheers,
Doug

toto said

I linked Alterna at the tangerine end.

What is Alterna Transit number and Institution number? Thanks