Add new entries to the forum for the following Banks/FIs | Site suggestions | Discussion forum

smayer97 said
Could sections for the following be created under the Financial Institutions section of the forum and respective discussion threads moved there?

Canadian Western Bank (CWB)
edit: (Neo Financial) Is see that was now added
Saven

Any others also worth considering?  

Re CWB, see Motive: https://www.motivefinancial.com/en/about-us ("We are a division of the Canadian Western Bank. As such, your eligible deposits are held at Canadian Western Bank, a member of Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC).")

I'm not sure about B2B or Tangerine, but Simplii is a division of CIBC.

https://www.simplii.com/en/faq.html: "What's the relationship between Simplii Financial and CIBC? Simplii Financial is a trademark and division of CIBC. Banking products and services branded Simplii Financial are offered by CIBC. “We”, “us” and “our” refer to the Simplii Financial division of CIBC."

Also see: https://simplii.intelliresponse.com/?requestType=NormalRequest&source=3&id=2047&sessionId=6fd8ee7a-9726-11e9-b2b2-b7a959ce6df4&question=Is+my+money+secure+with+Simplii+Financial

I agree that this can be confusing, but I don't think there is a thread on it.

The fact that Simplii is not separate is one reason I have not dealt with them, especially when I had more money in CIBC. However, I am changing my mind. I have dealt with Tangerine, but no longer see any reason to do so as their rates are paltry, I get no promos, and they have been hemorrhaging clients, so I'm not sure if they will last. I think CIBC is more secure than Tang.

Forum member file is putting together data on the various FIs. Perhaps that could be added as a sticky to the relevant subforums? Seems like too much for a chart.

Insurance info is hard to fully access at the CDIC site. It used to be better. Many of the FIs also do not make this as clear as they might.
T5s can sometimes be more helpful in figuring out who exactly holds your money - e.g. Motive will appear as Cdn Western Bk; Hubert will be Sunova; and Oaken will be Home Trust or Home Bank, but i don't know what it says for Simplii.

The issuer of deposits is in the legal account agreements. That's because one cannot contract legally with a non-entity like Simplii Financial, EQ Bank, or Hubert Financial. Those are just marketing/brand names used by the actual legal entities CIBC, Equitable Bank, and Sunova Credit Union.

The issuer is often also mentioned on the monthly statements.

One can't assume that the issuer will be the same for all the accounts of one brand. For example, not all TD branded deposits are issued by The Toronto-Dominion Bank. Some are. Some are issued by Canada Trust. Some are issued by TD Mortgage Corporation or TD Pacific Mortgage Corporation.

I have to disagree completely with AltaRed on this.

It is precisely these kinds of issues that this site should be concerned about. People on this forum are constantly looking at any number of FIs, many of which they never heard of before now, and they need info which is not easy to get at. If it were easy, there would not be these questions. AltaRed is a very sophisticated and knowledgeable investor who only buys GICs through a brokerage, puts only a very small proportion of his assets into them, and is not representative of the majority who seek info here.

Re: Norman's example at TD: Some years ago I was needing to get some 90 day term deposits for largish amounts (over CDIC limits). I knew enough to know about CDIC and their limits, which were then I think, 60K. I knew enough to know that TD (where my money was sitting) had several different insured entities. I did not know how best to spread my money among what was available or which entities offered which products as that was difficult to figure out. I sat down with a rep at TD and pretty much had to force him to find out and lay it out for me. His goal was to get me to do what was easiest for him and to reassure me that TD was the safest FI in the world, basically, and that it didn't matter which entity my money was in. My goal was to keep it all insured. If I'd wanted to simply put my trust in the bank, I would have been buying bank stocks, not term deposits. He acted like nobody had ever asked such questions before, which might have been true. Eventually I got what I wanted from him, but only because I was very persistent, and, even so, I couldn't get all of my term deposits and bank account fully covered at TD.

This is information that should be readily available to the investor, and usually isn't. Many people don't even understand the basics of CDIC coverage, never mind the complicated network of bank structures. It's important information and it belongs here. The question is where and how we can include it.

HISA & GIC charts could show proper legal entity name under Bank/Credit Union, then account name can make clearer the marketing, etc name. I agree that entities/names that don't exist as legal entities (e.g. Oaken, Simplii, Hubert, etc) ought not be listed as name of fi.

As far as I can tell all this only matters re CDIC coverage, so maybe there could be a separate place showing, where there's more than one, the different brand names that exist under the same CDIC coverage.

On the other hand, it's not like this site needs to provide everything on a platter - the more you spoonfeed the more people need to be spoonfed, draw the line somewhere!

"Parent Company" would not be good notation, e.g. BNS is Tangerine's parent company, noting that would be (at a minimum) confusing re CDIC coverage.

Bill said
"Parent Company" would not be good notation, e.g. BNS is Tangerine's parent company, noting that would be (at a minimum) confusing re CDIC coverage.  

If there is interest, I'd be happy to maintain a new Google spreadsheet, linked from the "Resources" page that lists the parent company of each of the CDIC members. In effect, a better CDIC members list that lists the ultimate parent company for each group of CDIC members.

For instance, The Bank of Nova Scotia is the parent company of the following CDIC members:
ADS Canadian Bank
Canadian Tire Bank*
Montreal Trust Company of Canada
National Trust Company
Scotia Mortgage Corporation
Tangerine Bank

* 20% non-controlling minority equity ownership

The current CDIC member list page has been updated, I see, but I'd argue it's actually worse in that the hierarchical list lists trade names of divisions that are themselves not CDIC members (i.e., "Wood Gundy," as an example).

Cheers,
Doug

smayer97 said
I'm not sure if Parent Company would be the right label but the intent is simply listing that which is related to the insurance... that is the context I would deem most useful and relevant. This is to be distinct from partial or whole ownership, such as Scotiabank owning Tangerine or 20% of Canadian Tire Bank.

The issue is that of direct legal financial liability from a depositor's perspective.  

Yeah, "parent company" is an imperfect term, particularly for minority equity investments. While it's true that a "parent company" could sell, close down, or write off its equity investment in a subsidiary, as since often the deposits of one financial institution group share the same or similar debt rating, there is a perceived increased safety by holding deposits with a higher rated financial institution group.

Cheers,
Doug