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I think that everything we know is posted already.

Just be careful of who you are dealing with; and read every syllable of all the fineprint. I would only deal with a bank that is insured by Canadian Deposit Insurance Corp or one of the provincial credit union insurance agencies. You need to know this precisely. PC Financial, for example, is owned by CIBC and is insured under their umbrella, so is not listed separately with CDIC. This means that your accounts in both places must together, fall within the CDIC limits in order to be fully insured.

Koho is not a bank or a credit union, as I understand it, but I don't know much about them.
There is info in this forum somewhere about Zen.
Not sure what you meant by eq. bank

I think there are a lot of changes underway right now in retail banking, and it's impossible to predict what it will all look like in 5 or 10 years or which corporations will survive and in what form. So, all the more reason to be careful about insurance and fine print.

It's not just about the rates and conveniences, although obviously those are important.

Thanks for noticing that PC Financial is listed separately on the CDIC website, Bill.
I don't think it used to be, and must admit to some confusion as it is also still listed under the CIB banner on the CIBC web page: https://www.cibc.com/ca/legal-trademarks/deposit-insurance.html

I would tend to assume that if it has its own listing with CIDC that it is indeed separately insured, but best to phone and ask CDIC directly. If it is separate, then that is the best thing from a consumer perspective.

Everyone has to make their own decisions about whether they want to risk more than the insured limits with the Big Banks. Personally, I don't feel that I am well enough informed (and doubt that I ever could be) to know how vulnerable those banks might be. If big established institutions like Barings and the Royal Bank of Scotland can get into big trouble, who am I to say that our big banks can't? We think they are very solid, and, compared to a great many in the world, they certainly are. Yet they do take bigger risks than I would and do have very large write-downs periodically. As long as our regulatory system isn't tampered with, they ought to be OK. It should be OK for now at least as I believe the current regulations were the product of a previous Liberal administration.
In any event, the Big Banks pay such dreadful rates of interest, generally speaking, that there is not too much risk of putting too much money there!
Wherever possible, I would email your questions (or do live chat) and keep a record of what was said in answer to your questions, as it can be cited later if needed.

Eq.bank is an arm of Equitable Bank. As far as I know, they have only been accessible through brokers until now. Maybe they are now branching out into direct retail banking. Their rates would have to improve substantially over what is offered through brokers in order to be worth bothering with. http://www.equitablebank.ca/br.....-hisa.html

So, that would imply that PC savings accounts etc are not covered separately by CDIC, and only through CIBC, as I suggested earlier??

I previously wrote about the relationship between

1. CIBC,
2. President's Choice Bank, and
3. the President's Choice Financial-branded products

in the discussion Are PC Financial Services and CIBC the same bank?.

Here's the link for EQ Bank, i.e. Equitable Bank - 3% rate on their savings account.

https://www.eqbank.ca/

EQ Bank is an online offering of Equitable Bank. Similar to the Hubert Financial offering of Sunova Credit Union. This is from EQ Bank: Company Profile:

EQ Bank is brought to you by Equitable Bank, a federally regulated Schedule I Bank with over 500 employees and total assets under management of approximately $14.4 billion.

For nearly 45 years, brokers across the country have been helping Canadians realize their financial goals through Equitable Bank products such as mortgages, home equity lines of credit and a variety of deposit services.

Equitable Bank was founded in 1970 as The Equitable Trust Company. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Equitable Group Inc., whose common and preferred shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols EQB and EQB.PR.C, respectively.

Does EQ Bank have enough substance to merit its own discussion forum, like Tangerine Bank and Zag Bank?

EQ Bank Savings Plus Account Fees & Features has more details on their limits.

$500,000 per customer is their total account balance limit.

$25,000 per cheque is the maximum for cheque deposit. Could that limit be just for their mobile cheque deposit (depositing a cheque by taking a picture of it through their mobile app)? It is possible. But, I would be surprised if EQ Bank would refuse something like a $30,000 bank draft that one had mailed in to them for deposit.

Equitable Bank still has their advisor/brokerage channel open: Equitable Bank: The Broker Experience.

Norman1 said

$500,000 per customer is their total account balance limit.

$25,000 per cheque is the maximum for cheque deposit. Could that limit be just for their mobile cheque deposit (depositing a cheque by taking a picture of it through their mobile app)? It is possible. But, I would be surprised if EQ Bank would refuse something like a $30,000 bank draft that one had mailed in to them for deposit.

Reply:
I think they only allow one account per person - as per second paragraph in press release above, so the 500K limit would be for that account.

Unclear about the cheque deposit max.