EQ: "speed demon" | EQ Bank | Discussion forum

I pulled from Meridian to EQ and it showed up in a few minutes.
Then had to wait for the five days to purchase the three month GiC.

During the five days I will receive interest on my pull at the current 2.3 %.

Excellent service!!

Yeah, Norman's right that that's just EQ Bank crediting your account straight away before receiving the funds. It'll be interesting to see when your TDCT account is debited, but I suspect it'll be debited by end of day today.

A good indicator of how fast an FI's EFT processing time is when you push funds out from the losing FI to the gaining FI. For example, with Hubert, if you initiate a push (from another FI) before 10-10:30 am ET (7-7:30 am PT) on a business day, your Hubert account will almost always be credited by the end of the business day - and that was when there were only two day clearing windows per day out west (now there are three). DP (data point) is that Hubert's two cut-off times on operating business days are 7-7:30 am and 2-2:30 pm Pacific Time. No idea when their third clearing window cut-off time is.

So far, outside of the "Big 5," HSBC, and Hubert, I've not found an FI that matches them on EFT processing times.

Cheers,
Doug

Loonie said
Why not? It's a very old account with seniors pricing. I don't even know if they offer online access to it.  

Norman's advice at post # 10 is likely correct and should work, provided that your TDCT account in question is not coded to restrict online or other electronic access. Most, if not all, of the "Big 5" have such limitations they can apply in their core banking system. However, even if that's the case, you should be go to see your friendly revolving door of TDCT CSRs, due to their relatively high employee turnover, who most likely won't be able to put a name to your face, and ask them to enable your account for online access. Better yet, you could even have them sign you up for online access so they can put a sales opportunity on for you so they get a sale towards their annual sales, cross-sell, and referral targets. 😉

Cheers,
Doug

Loonie said
…
In any event, went to the bank machine today and all is well.
EQ still won't let me buy the GIc online though.

Well, EQ Bank can't actually tell that the debit has been posted.

TD Bank doesn't send any notification back to EQ Bank when the pre-authorized debit has been posted to your TD account.

No problem, Loonie. 😉

Still, EQ Bank should at least follow common credit union good business practice, and indeed even Tangerine's practice, of manually removing the hold when the funds are used to purchase a GIC. Tangerine even has a cool feature no other financial institution has (that I've encountered). Even if you don't have an access to funds limit that grants you immediate access to your deposited funds, or it exceeds the amount of your access to funds limits, they have a feature they implemented a few years ago called "automatic hold transfer" whereby you can still transfer, internally, to another savings account or GIC in the same beneficial ownership and, presumably, registration type (i.e., non.-reg., TFSA, RRSP, or RRIF), and that portion of the hold on the original account (the debit account) will transfer with that portion transferred over.

This would be a perfectly reasonable solution for EQ Bank to implement, at least until they introduce access to funds limits, which they should do if they want to retain me as a client. And, I won't be afraid to close my account in a year even if they tell me they can never re-open it again (as they told @Shawguy) as I will just tell them they'd better, if they know what's good for them, as I would initiate expeditiously an official complaint with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada for unlawful and/or unreasonable retention of my online banking profile. They're entitled to maintain, for the typical 7-10 years, my personal information and transaction histories for any accounts I have with them, but they don't necessarily need to keep active an online banking profile or debit card to which no accounts are associated. The Privacy Commissioner would likely be quite disturbed to hear my report, particularly when no other federally-regulated chartered financial institution, to my knowledge, mandates keeping active an online banking profile after all remaining accounts are closed. 😉

(On that latter point, I speak with first-hand knowledge as both a former employee and customer of HSBC Bank Canada and a current or former customer of several Canadian banks, none of whom maintain online banking profiles after you close your last accounts with them.)

Cheers,
Doug

I think we found out last winter that EQ Bank has an inflexible setup for dealing with GIC purchases with funds that still have a five-day hold. One just can't do it!

There was no workaround. People who called in were instructed to wait until the hold on the savings account funds passed and then purchase the GIC at the lower rate. Rate on the GIC would then be adjusted afterwards or a "goodwill" payment would be made to bring the net yield up to the expired 3.33% rate.

Obviously, a 90-day GIC is equivalent to a 90-day hold. So, nothing would be lost if one could purchase a 90-day GIC using funds that are still under a five-day hold.