Unable to add Hubert Financial to my Oaken External Accounts | Page 2 | Oaken Financial | Discussion forum

Loonie said
I can't remember the details but I do remember something about this coming up before on the forum.
It makes no sense to me - just like their policy of not offering registered savings accounts.

Accordingly, like Doug, I have never opened a savings account there, and have removed almost all my registered GICs.

I believe, however, that you can set up your non-registered GICs to be sent directly to another FI on maturity (at least you used to be able to).

In their early years, i had several GICs there, but I expect that I will eventually have none unless they pull up their socks. Service quality has also declined markedly.
However, they have been quick with registered transfers - and free.  

Ah, right, I forgot they offer fee-free registered plan transfers. As well, yeah, that's a good way to think of Oaken Financial, since the offer the ability to pay out maturing GICs to external bank accounts, to just use Oaken for GICs and not HISAs.

Interestingly, the Home Bank and Home Trust HISAs available through registered deposit brokers and discount brokerages, to the extent your discount brokerage offers Home Trust/Home Bank HISAs, now pays 3.40% (https://www.hometrust.ca/deposits/hisa/), which is the same rate as Oaken Financial. Given that, and assuming you deal with a discount brokerage that provides access to Home Trust/Home Bank HISAs, that would be your best bet for going with their HISAs, rather than Oaken Financial.

Likewise, in this upside-down world where direct-to-consumer GICs used to command a premium, now brokered GICs command the premium.

Rates offered on Home Trust/Home Bank GICs through FundSERV (nominee accounts) are fully 0.20-0.50% higher than Home Trust/Home Bank GICs offered through Oaken Financial (depending on the term). See below:

https://www.hometrust.ca/deposits/deposit-rates/deposit-rates-home-trust/

Loonie, if you don't have a discount brokerage account opened, you should consider it, just for simplicity for your executor(trix) and since direct-to-consumer rates no longer offer the premium they once did to brokered GICs.

Cheers,
Doug

Alexandre said
Give it 2 business days, before calling them. I had exact same problem when linking EQ bank account, and suddenly it appeared in the list of linked accounts next day.

Thanks! The link to Hubert appears active today even though the process seemed to not complete when I added it online. All is well!