Innovation Credit Union looking to go national | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

YES! I knew it. When the newspapers (believe it was either The Province or The Vancouver Sun) reported on Coast Capital Savings' bid to re-incorporate as a federal credit union, they confirmed that at least two (2) other credit unions, one in Alberta, one in Saskatchewan and possibly one in Ontario were looking to potentially re-incorporate as federal credit unions as well. They did not, however, name the credit unions at the time.

Not sure if I've posted my "prediction" here or not but, at any rate, I "nailed" the one prediction on the Saskatchewan one. It's Innovation Credit Union, one of the three credit unions in that province that launched the FreeStyle No Fee Chequing Account (some of them have since dropped the "FreeStyle" from the product's name and have diverged a bit on the same marketing they'd launched together). The other two were its larger Conexus Credit Union and also much smaller Cornerstone Credit Union. In October, all three credit unions launched their remote account opening technology OpenAnywhere that can be entirely paperless, without even sending in a VOID cheque and, basically, involves the new member sending themselves an Interac e-Transfer from their external bank account and/or uses a third-party verification service (similar to the Government of Canada's SecureKey Concierge Service that sign in to your online banking to authenticate you into your CRA or Service Canada account). 🙂

The reason why I said Innovation over Conexus is because, although Conexus uses OpenAnywhere, to open an account as a non-resident of Saskatchewan, they require you to visit a branch whereas Innovation does not.

Details here:

https://www.voteyesinnovation2020.ca/

With that, can I make it three for three? (Or, four for four since I wasn't surprised by Coast Capital Savings' bid. ;))

The others will be (these are my "predictions"):

- Connect First Credit Union (branded as First Calgary Financial and Chinook Financial) from Alberta
- FirstOntario Credit Union from, obviously, Ontario

Meridian Credit Union is "going national" the old-fashioned way of incorporating a chartered bank subsidiary. Although, possibly with this preference/investment share issue and persuasion by the federal government, they may look to modify that in their application and re-incorporate nationally, too. 🙂

Also, when I became a Coast Capital Savings member in December, the Member Banking Specialist informed me that the B.C. government, through the Credit Union Deposit Insurance Corporation of B.C., is reviewing its deposit insurance coverage with a bias to a downward revision, potentially removing its unlimited deposit insurance coverage and, I think, bringing it in line with DICO in Ontario (isn't it $250,000 per depositor in Ontario?). I think you'll see similar moves by other provinces.

Cheers,
Doug