CC new fee structure starting Apr 1/14 | Coast Capital Savings | Discussion forum

Loonie said
Rick, can you tell us how you just got 3.3 at CDF?
I don't see any reference to bonus rates on their website, and the current 5yr given for non-registered seems to be 2.75; registered @ 2.85.

Loonie, Canadian Western Bank, the company behind Canadian Direct Financial (essentially, a virtual "branch"/transit of that company), offers a "Scratch & Earn" promotion on its non-registered and registered GIC rates. Typically, they offer very aggressive campaigns in the fall/winter months for RRSP "catch-up" and TFSA contributions. Usually, their "minimum" bonus you can "scratch" is comparable (or better) to the Manitoba credit unions but I've heard of some people getting "lucky" and scratching a bonus that, all-in, yielded between 5-7% as recently as late 2012. They don't publicize those bonuses - they are really no different than the "Big Banks" and their "discretionary pricing" (that is, the "power" granted to retail salespersons to grant x bps bonus depending on your "value" as a customer to the bank in terms of how much "share of your wallet" [a key metric that measures percentage of a customer's total assets & liabilities with a particular institution and its subsidiaries] the bank has with them); the only difference is, they transfer this "power" to the customer and it becomes a game of chance. I'm not sure which method I'd prefer (I think I like neither, preferring open & transparent rates on their website; the banks don't like that because it squeezes their margins and leads to "price wars"). Hope that helps!

Rick said
Still have my CC chking acct open. Maybe one day I may have to use them again. Only ever used (and still do) CC ATM's, so no inconvenience there. Their rates on GIC's and their lack of appreciation for long term customers are what motivated me to move my business elsewhere. The 5 year rate at CC is 2.25% while I just locked one in at CDF, with the bonus .25% rate, at 3.3%. That's over 2800.00 in my pocket over the length of the term on just 1 of my laddered GIC's. Their TFSA is 1.1% while CDF is at 2.25%. In the 35 years I've lived in BC, I have had several institutions for my savings, but I have only ever changed my main financial institution twice. Left HSBC when they got too "humoungous bank" – like with their service and rates, and CC for the same reason. I'm not a big fan of bouncing my funds around to take advantage of minimal rate differences, but CC just can't compete and it's costing me too much.

Ah, yeah, the other I like about Coast Capital is their "access to deposited funds" limits when you make a deposit at the ATM - most credit unions hold all your ATM deposits; Coast Capital (and Vancity) are more like the "Big Banks" that way, trusting you with immediate access to a percentage of those funds dependent upon, things like credit score as well as potentially your assets/liabilities with the bank before granting you higher "access to deposited funds" limits.

To your point on rates, though, yes I agree - that's a substantial difference on GIC rates and better go with the higher rates. I'd still potentially keep a small amount of savings with Coast Capital (if I dealt with them) for liquidity purposes since the funds are easy to access (via EFT or cheque), but no more than 1-5% of my total assets.

Cheers,
Doug

Loonie said
Thanks for the explanation, Rick. Good deal, but I too would prefer not to rely on chance for a better return. I'm sorry I seem to have missed it for this year.

Not a huge deal, but I think you may have meant "me" in your reply, no?

I know, people confuse Rick and I all the time.

Cheers,
Doug

Getting back to the fee change at CC.
I deal with CC as I like to deal my day to day stuff locally. I don't find them to be all that customer conscious but before I found this site and where I could get better rates CC has the best rates in BC.
When I look at what other CUs offer for what you can do with a saving account CC allows you do to do anything you would normally do with a chequing account but you just can't write cheques. So for the odd cheque we need to write ....do an immediate online transfer to the chequing account and write the cheque. We have a similar option with BMO that my wife uses BUT to use the ATM or a bank withdrawal from the Savings account there is a $5 withdrawal fee but $0 at CC.

The debit card use of 10 free is not that bad as I would imagine that between my wife and I we have done no more that 10 debit card transactions in our life time as we use credit vs debit.

So all in all the change does not affect us and is not that big of a deal.

No worries at all, Loonie. It's all good.

That's interesting, Rick, that CDF/CWB offers "bonus" GIC rates based on your insurance business with Canadian Direct Insurance (one good thing HSBC has a knack for is buying high and selling low and CDI is no exception - they claimed they couldn't make a go of it a number of years ago and sold it to CWB and CWB has been more than happy with its performance! same thing with their full-service investment advisory business; it's doing very well, apparently, as part of National Bank Wealth Management now!). An interesting "workaround" to get around the rules preventing federally chartered banks from selling insurance (perhaps that's why we've not seen credit unions incorporate nationally yet?) - would require a strong data analytics division (and customer privacy consents, though!) to share such data in such a timely way.

I like Canadian Western Bank. Never dealt with them personally but they are very conservative and very well run - very much like a well-run credit union in many ways and, when you phone their branch line, they don't even have an IVR, a live person answers!

Now...if only they offered more than one free cheque order and paperless self-to-self bank-to-bank transfer registration, I'd consider making them my primary day-to-day banking account.

Cheers,
Doug