Innovative Promotional Product Offer | Page 2 | General comparisons | Discussion forum

Congratulations!
Can i ask, do you live in AB?

You have more stamina for experimentation than I, but good luck with it!
Beware any possible fee or penalty for closing account after only X months. 3 to 6 months is a common requirement.
Let us know what you learn.

You would have your work cut out for you keeping track of all this! LOL

JohnnyCash said
I guess the issue for me is the short duration, yes the higher rate is rewarding, just the hassle though. I'll think about it.  

Not to mention, the 100K eligibility limit for the promotion.

Loonie said
Over at Hubert, the first quarter of their one year GIC is now 3.95%.

On 100K, the difference would be approx $180 although likely to go up a bit in September.

If you do the Lethbridge offer, you are going to keep it there almost 3 months anyway, so the difference between Hubert 3 month GIC and Lethbrigdge HISA is negligible.

Hubert has better longer term potential reward for the bother of signing up. Or maybe you already belong. The annual rate on that one year GIC is now 4.10, and of course you can upgrade every three months if rates improve.

I know what I'd do...
Something to consider anyway.  

I would agree the 1st Choice Credit Union's offer is limited in its appeal outside of their regional footprint and the Hubert GIC may be the way to go for most folks. The offer from 1st Choice seems to be geared mostly to drawing in new clients with the promo, hoping they will utilize other product offerings and become long term clients. With that said, for clients living within their branch region, they seem to be an option worthy of consideration.

Parsimonious said
1st Choice account setup took less than 1 hour to complete. Tang, Royal and Scotia all recognize 1st Choice as an external account (transit and institution) for the purpose or pushing and pulling funds. 4.7 on 100K to wait until further rate hikes transpire is not so bad i suppose. Digital technology seems to be on par with any of the majors. Communication was quick and accurate.  

Slightly off topic but related to something mentioned in the quote above:

I know Tang can easily push and pull funds to and from external accounts (with no fees), but I thought most of the big banks don't allow this. How is this done with Royal? If there's a way to do it, I wasn't aware of it... Parsimonious, would you be able to expand how this works at Royal Bank please? Thanks!

SavingsQs: I'm not sure I'm answering the question you are asking, but you CAN use an external entity to push and pull to the big banks. It's getting the big banks to do the transfers from their end that's usually a no-go.

When RBC bought Ally (2013, I think) and my terms matured, Royal tried hard to prevent me from removing the cash without paying any fees. Would I like a chequing account? No. Would I like a draft? No. Would I like to buy something from RBC? No. Would I pay a closing fee? No.

I insisted they had to respect the terms of my original contract, and give me the cash with no fees. The agents I spoke to insisted (pretended?) they'd never heard of EFT or DD/DD. I went to another institution with the account codes and sucked the cash out from there. Then Royal let me close my relationship with them, as they no longer had any of my assets to glom onto.
RetieEd

Parsimonious said
SavingsQs, set up an account withTang if you don't already have one (sounds like you do)... zero fees and occasional promotional HISA rates. Use Tang as the hub to push and pull funds. Example; you want to transfer funds to 1st Choice from RBC. First ask Tang to pull from Royal to Tangerine then ask Tang to push to 1st Choice. Long way around but for some reason Tang is the most flexible for allowing push/pull between institutions. For this reason I park my cash with Tang and occasionally get surprised by promotional offers. Hope that helps.  

Unfortunately, Tang has low limits (25K) on how much can be transferred in a single day. This can be raised with a phone call, but then you sit in limbo for 30+ min.

If one needs a hub, I would recommend Hubert. You still need to call for higher limits but, at least, someone answers the phone in a timely manner.

HermanH said
Unfortunately, Tang has low limits (25K) on how much can be transferred in a single day. This can be raised with a phone call, but then you sit in limbo for 30+ min.

If one needs a hub, I would recommend Hubert. You still need to call for higher limits but, at least, someone answers the phone in a timely manner.  

Also, Tang only allows 3 active external links. Want more, you have to replace one with another and have to go through the linking process each time, even for a FI that was once linked before.

Interest rate on the Prime Time HISA account was increased today to 5.45%. There's only a little over a month left in the promotional period, still worth moving in some funds for those below the $100,000 threshold.

https://www.1stchoicesavings.ca/en/primetimesavings