motusbank service level | motusbank | Discussion forum

Transfers still take forever. Along with parent Meridian, they do not process the request in a timely fashion. This makes it harder to keep track of one's accounts. It often takes four business days for the money to move, with a minimum of three.

Where feasible, you are often better off to use a cheque, especially for a large amount. It still takes just as long to clear, but you start earning interest and it shows up in your account, immediately.

Loonie said
Transfers still take forever. Along with parent Meridian, they do not process the request in a timely fashion. This makes it harder to keep track of one's accounts. It often takes four business days for the money to move, with a minimum of three.

Those have always taken 5 business days for me. It's an eternity.

Loonie said
I read the RFD post to which Briguy referred. I don't normally follow RFD because it's too chaotic for me. I didn't read any follow up comments. However, my guess would be that motus suspected he was using it as a business account, which would be prohibited. That would be why they would be asking "personal" questions. There is probably something in their system that flags an "excessive" number of e-transfers. If that's what they suspect, then they should say so. There may be something he isn't telling us.

…

For sure. The poster didn't share any explanation what as many as 20 Interac e-transfers a month (mostly outgoing, some incoming), each around $100 to $250, were for.

It does look like a business. Maybe a few incoming transfers from clients paying their invoices and a larger number of outgoing transfers to pay suppliers or workers.

Briguy said

It makes sense that the poster on RFD was perhaps running a business through a personal account. He said afterwards they didn't totally freeze his account. It's just recently I'm hearing about FIs flagging accounts. I had my account totally frozen by Revolut after I send some USD to my family in USA until I uploaded a lot of documents showing my source of funding for the account ( ie. statements from the credit cards I used and from the bank whose debit card I used ). I mentioned this to a friend and he said he had to upload documents to Tangerine bank for something similar. I wonder if this is becoming a pattern that FIs are freezing and flagging accounts?  

What was the dollar value of the USD you tried sending, @Briguy?

It's worth noting that Revolut isn't a bank, credit union, trust company, or even a federally-regulated third party service provider of the same. Still, they're regulated as a money service business—just like the banks and credit unions—by FINTRAC. So, they have to ascertain (a) who is operating the accounts, (b) whether someone may be operating those accounts for the benefit of others, and (c) whether those funds may be indirectly being diverted to nationally declared terrorist organizations or otherwise been involved in criminal activity or the underground economy in some way.

The problem with these fintechs, though, is they pride themselves on offering a seamless, digital application and Know Your Customer onboarding process. Yes, they can verify your identity easily and they have pretty good algorithms for creating large datasets on your spending patterns, but when it comes down to the crux of the matter, their systems seem to fall flat on their face in terms of monitoring your accounts. They should be able to tell what the source of your funds was, by looking back on the transaction history. Banks, yes, may be able to access that original source of funding straight away, if credit card and bank were the same financial institution; however, that still doesn't really tell them how you derived those funds. Moreover, if the amount was a small amount (under $5,000-10,000), one could argue they're being overly strict to compensate for the fundamental failings of their system—that is, that they don't really know their customers that well, so, in effect, they're doing this to put up appearances to the regulators.

I generally think the same is true of Motus Bank. They may well have a slick digital KYC and lending onboarding process provided by Grow Technology (which was last year acquired by ATB Financial) and a nice looking online banking interface, brand, and website, but it masks the fact that their core banking system is in need of a migration as it's something out of the dinosaur ages (i.e., the 1980s). It's made worse by the fact that it doesn't even allow them to automatically post and process incoming and outgoing EFT payments which, together with their trying to run a lean operation by focusing people resources on front-line staff as opposed to back-office staff and made worse by their recent job cuts, means EFT payments take fully 3-5 business days longer to post to/from Meridian accounts. Together with their overly strict credit risk policy framework that doesn't provide for "access to deposited funds" limits apply to Meridian accounts, whereby a portion of the deposit is made immediately available for same-day credit, it's highly problematic.

I have no doubt that Meridian front-line staff and, yes, even most of their back-office staff and senior management team are good people who otherwise try and deliver the best service they can. However, their technologies and policies are holding them back, in a huge way. It's, perhaps, exacerbated that Meridian Credit Union has tapped the subordinated debt markets, twice, in the past year with Quebec's Caisse de depot de placement du Quebec's private equity arm stepping up as the sole buyer of their subordinated debt. Subordinated debt ranks just below Meridian Credit Union deposits (though notionally above Motus Bank deposits in the sense that, as Norman1 has said in another recent thread, in liquidity or solvency issue at Motus Bank, the CDIC and OSFI only have authority to compel a parent company to put up capital in a struggling bank if they want to retain their subsidiary bank and save it other remedial alternatives being imposed by the regulators) but, crucially, above the members' equity and investment/preference shares in Meridian Credit Union. Their reason was that they needed to fund their expansion, which could be because their loan book grew at a faster rate than their members' equity and retained earnings (from profitability), which, itself, is a question. Or, they could be meaning capital expansion (i.e., branch openings). However, if that's the case, in a post-COVID-19 world, Meridian was first out with a press release that did not indicate the branch hour reductions were to be temporary. In short, I have questions of their capital allocation and execution strategy. 🙁

Cheers,
Doug

file said
They no longer have Grow, which I'm sure they weren't amused over when that ATB deal went down since they now have to work on an alternative.

I went down the road of digging through Meridian's core banking history, which is kind of strewn about the internet. They migrated to the Wealthview platform from Fincentric in 2006, but this was ultimately sold to Fiserv who continues to own it. They were still using it as of 2016 when they were talking about launching Motus, so it's safe to say they're continuing to use it to this day.

The real kicker is... Alterna also uses Wealthview and has substantially better EFT handling which when I was digging around made me ponder these questions:

1. Is their core banking not the problem, but instead the integration between their online/mobile banking and the core banking?
2. Are they on an older/forked version of Wealthview that just doesn't compare to what Alterna uses?  

@file, thank you for your thoughtful, detailed reply to my post above, and for your added questions. 🙂

Wealthview was indeed a common core banking system used by many credit unions, including First West Credit Union. While they've migrated their online banking platform from MemberDirect to Forge, it's unclear who their current core banking system provider is.

In answer to your questions, #1 is certainly a possibility, as is #2. It's quite possible they've never upgraded to the newest version of Wealthview. It's also possible they've since migrated to a different solution, possibly something in-house, which they did without public announcement (which would be in keeping with their general lack of communication—only when prodded publicly do they seem to respond).

I'm also not entirely sure Alterna is still using Wealthview. I strongly suspect they've migrated to Temenos, and possibly just did so without public announcement.

In any case, whether it's #1, #2, or #3, the common denominator here is they have both policies and procedures that are either overly and unduly strict and/or antiquated. They also appear to have a corporate culture that is based on anti-innovation—that is, to preserve the status quo at all costs. 🙁

Cheers,
Doug

@Loonie Another user posting on Reddit how his account was frozen by Motus.

I don't see this with any other Canadian bank- what's up with Motus?

Motus bank locked me out of my account
byu/s003987 inPersonalFinanceCanada

Loonie said
I haven't had any problems with motus recently. The biggest ongoing nuisance is how long it tkes for transfers to show.

There are any number of reasons why this person's account may have been locked. If they are reasons that involve law enforcement, they might not be eager to disclose them to him.

My guess, off the top, is that the reason might be because he closed all his external accounts. Without checking the Agreement, I think most of the online-only banks, if not all, require you to maintain an external account.

I still have an account with them, as it still suits the purpose for which it was intended, but I don't rely on it for everyday banking and have alternative cash if needed. But if I ever got locked out and couldn't get a resolution within a few hours, i'd be gone.
I haven't called CS since I opened the account and had various problems at that time.

If I closed this one, I would go to AlternaBank with this particular sum of money.  

Sounds like a good strategy. They are a good bank.

picassocat said
Just wondering, is Motusbank a full service bank, can you pay your bills with them i.e. hydro, credit cards etc? I know they accept Québec residents; can you pay school tax, municipal tax for la belle province? Or is Motusbank just a parking spot?  

I have the max under CDIC with them all in 3% GIC's. I transfer funds into a HISA. From what I can see when I go online, they offer a No fee chequing account giving .15%, HISA @1.0%. You can get a debit card with them. You can also set up bill payments. I see you can set up Q-trade through them as well.

Pythagoras said
.......Probably transfers are slower than other banks; but I think this is because Motus is a small bank, and needs to be very careful.
......Being super cautious not only protects the bank, but also us, its members..... 

Motus / Meridian is neither small, nor slow in processing transfers due to concern for its customers, in my view.

Meridian is the second largest credit union in Canada with assets of $22,977,921,744 , 385,176 members with 93 locations.

Their policy of dragging transfer time to the disadvantage of customers is long standing, and has resulted in my own withdrawal from doing business with them in favor of just about any other FI with which members of this Forum are familiar with.

In my view, it is a corporate policy that favors the institution to the detriment of its customer members.

Correct me if I am wrong.....

Stephen

Nehpets said

Pythagoras said
.......Probably transfers are slower than other banks; but I think this is because Motus is a small bank, and needs to be very careful.
......Being super cautious not only protects the bank, but also us, its members..... 

Motus / Meridian is neither small, nor slow in processing transfers due to concern for its customers, in my view.

Meridian is the second largest credit union in Canada with assets of $22,977,921,744 , 385,176 members with 93 locations.

Their policy of dragging transfer time to the disadvantage of customers is long standing, and has resulted in my own withdrawal from doing business with them in favor of just about any other FI with which members of this Forum are familiar with.

In my view, it is a corporate policy that favors the institution to the detriment of its customer members.

Correct me if I am wrong.....

Stephen  

Loonie said
Stephen is right. This practice is part and parcel of Meridian/Motus and has nothing to do with size of the FI.

I don't know why they do things this way, but it's a pain.

I am not sure it favours them, because they are equally slow with transfers-in and -out. I suspect they just don't want to put the money and time into upgrading their technology. They are too busy with their expansion plans.
It doesn't make them any safer, just slower to show the transaction. Transfer time plus hold time, together, comes out about the same as other FIs that appear to act faster.  

Those are interesting points. I didn't realize Meridian /Motus were as large as they are.
But still, Simplii, BMO, Desjardins, were hacked. I am sure other banks as well.

All the rules and restrictions Motus has in place actually made me more confident opening an account with them.