What is the “REAL MATURITY” of your GIC vs what you “ACTUALLY RECEIVE” beware. | GIC discussions | Discussion forum

I was aware of a small GIC (Coast Capital) about to mature with my adviser. His front end system is one of the largest insurance companies in Canada. Since I only receive statements from them every six months I print one monthly online and enter all of my investments into an Excel program that I built that has each specific investment and its’ value at maturity (I know not perfect) and it has a summary page that I review every month. For some reason I thought I would download the statements the day before maturity, the day of maturity and the day after since they never advise you what the actual maturity value is. The odd hit and miss time it will show online in the “transactions” but not always. My adviser has also alluded to the fact that they have “more than one system”. My Excel program has always been a few cents out….no big deal…..as it only calculates based on a full year and some GICs will be for a year and day or two. About a month before the maturities were due he contacted me for dispositions as I guess he was going to be on vacation…or? I advised him of exactly what I wanted…and that was done…no problem. So the GIC was supposed to mature at $xxxx.51. The download the day before maturity read $xxxx.20. The day after the funds were moved as requested……$xxxx.00. NO CENTS!!!!

I checked “transactions” a number of times but nothing. I then asked about transactions not showing and was provided a copy from “his system” which was clearly $xxxx.00. So asked where are the cents? A few days later my cash account was topped up by the missing cents.

The cents are not a huge issue for me but the inaccuracy of their systems is. And how many 100’s and 1,000’s of GICs do they short change on? Where do the funds go? It is like the old story we heard years ago about the bank worker that took 5 cents from everyone’s account and became a millionaire. They already hit me up for $175 for self directed fees!!!!

A lot of times when I buy a GIC I do receive a confirmation of it but rarely does it show matured value (Oaken is one of the few). So it is worthwhile to ask for value at maturity and or find a means to calculate the value beforehand.