Zag bank NO interest | Zag Bank | Discussion forum

Opened account GIC said they would send email on how to take pic of cheque no email came.

Hello fellow savers.
I jumped into ZAG headfirst with multiple GICS including a TFSA and RRSP GIC.
Of course they do not/will not send statements in the mail (no name service). As well, you can only look up transactions in a 3 month window. (i called CSR and found out that you can do a range of dates to a maximum of 3 months).
Unbeknown to me, the 2.5% interest on the GIC is not compounded. They take the monthly interest amount and place it in a different savings account which currently receives 1.6%.
It is a total nightmare to "follow the money".
Apparently I told them to pay the interest monthly, so they are putting it in a lower interest savings account. I was never advised that there were any other options. After speaking with a supervisor today, he claims that based on my comments, they will try and improve the website. (yeah right). Once these GICs mature, I will probably leave ZAG for good.

Her complaint is that she didn't know that the interest would not be compounded. If it had been compounded, then the 1.6 rate wouldn't matter.
I don't deal with ZAG so I don't know if they make this clear when you take out GICs with them.

Most GICs, in my experience, do include compounded interest unless you set them up for regular income stream, e.g. in retirement. This has probably been dentgal's experience as well or she wouldn't be surprised.
I'm sure that in future she will be checking the fine print to make sure all her GICs are set up the way she wants them.

Oaken is a good example of how this works in a way that is clearly communicated. If you want monthly payouts etc., you get a lower rate of interest, and their rates charts make it very clear. Too bad ZAG didn't make theirs as clear, but it's a common way to make interest rates look higher than what you are going to get.

However, the solution now is to do exactly as bali says. Now that she knows about it, dentgal can mark her calendar to pull the interest when it is paid out and put it somewhere else where she can, hopefully, get as good or better return!
In my opinion, it ought to be possible to set it up so that the interest is paid out to an external account at the FI of choice, but they may not be willing or able to do that.

Not being able to get statements more than 3 months back s*cks. They have that information, and you should be able to get access to it as well. They have to keep that info for CRA among other things.
I am not sure how long you have had these GICs and can't remember when ZAG started. Hopefully just one year. I would be a bit concerned about the non-registered GIC. Hopefully it is for enough money that they are obliged to send you a tax receipt for each year. Make sure you receive that in the new year, especially since it's not clear that you know how much it should be for, and it will also include interest on the savings account which you may not know if too many months have elapsed. At that point, if not before, you should be able to verify that you were paid correctly and make sure your tax return is complete.

For what it's worth, I try to check all my accounts at the beginning of every month.
Something else to bear in mind in regards to the RSPs and TFSAs, particularly in view of ZAG's short leash on statements, is that once you have moved these investments to another FI, it is very unlikely that the "old" one, i.e. ZAG, will still have any records at all that you can retrieve. So it is best to check, save, and print those regularly and also just before you make a transfer or cash out.

Live and learn!
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Hello, When I enrolled, it wasn't clear to me either. But I asked them and after many communications and emails I got the point. For me, I don't even have another account with them.