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Errors in BMO Investorline December Statement

7K views 29 replies 8 participants last post by  agent99 
#1 ·
As most on BMOIL know, BMOIL changed the format of their on-line monthly report in December. One item, is a summary of income received. We have 6 accounts, and that summary is incorrect on all of them.

Basically, the amounts shown just don't represent the amounts received and shown in the detailed part of the report. In one of our accounts they show that we received $72 in income in 2016 when actual number is closer to $10k (rough number).

I brought this to their attention almost a month ago. They sent me a message today saying that the report was corrected 2 days ago. But it is still unchanged and wrong. All the summary has to do is add up a series of cash flows.

Anyone else have same problem?
 
#2 · (Edited)
Ok you made me look .
I checked the Dec and Nov statements and they both seem out by what they call a dividend on the statement and what the dividend total is.
However I have and I'm going to assume you may have some holdings that are not paying a straight dividend.I'll give an example of Boston Pizza which is a distribution but on the statements show as a dividend. If I remove the holdings that pay a distribution the numbers add up correctly.It appears that unless it is interest being paid they call everything else a dividend although some aren't but they do add the eligible dividends up correctly.
It wouldn't seem to explain a $72 vs $10k discrepancy though.
 
#3 ·
We had about $800 in true dividends in December in one account. For example, Exchange Income, Russel Metals, Crescent Point etc. And this is what statement says:

Income you received
Type of Income Current Month Year-to-Date (YTD)
Dividends 0.00 72.56
Total 0.00 72.56
Still no correction or explanation from BMOIL Hard to imagine I am only one with this type of error.
 
#4 ·
I am surprised that others with BMOIL have not seen this problem or chimed in.

I have had a series of mylink message exchanges. Theirs saying that the problem had been corrected and giving me detailed instructions of where to find my corrected estatements! If I didn't know where to find them, how would I have found out they were still wrong and no corrections had been made.

Finally today, I called them. The agent went away and spoke to his upper level guys. Came back and read to me from an internal memo they had received. It stated that their new software had coding errors. This affected all types of income. Interest, Dividends, REIT distributions, Mutual fund distributions etc. How some of those still got into the income received, he did not know. They are apparently working on a fix, but no timeline for completion. Scary part, is that I think he said that the same system will produce the T-slips this year! Deadline for those is getting close!
 
#22 ·
Finally today, I called them. The agent went away and spoke to his upper level guys. Came back and read to me from an internal memo they had received. It stated that their new software had coding errors. This affected all types of income. Interest, Dividends, REIT distributions, Mutual fund distributions etc. How some of those still got into the income received, he did not know. They are apparently working on a fix, but no timeline for completion.

Scary part, is that I think he said that the same system will produce the T-slips this year!

i only have one holding where the BMO reporting is effed up due to the above-mentioned coding errors. It's a unit trust with eligible dividends, but these are reported on statements - also in web account - as interest. It's been going on for years.

re the tax slips, what BMO has always told me is that the T5s will be correct, although the particular representative offering this information also said she was aware that the statements look alarming & many clients have complained.

my experience is that the representative was right, the T5s are correct (ie they are based on another system thank goodness), but the statements continue to look alarming.

.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Finally I was able to get BMOIL to correct our December Statement. This after 3 months, at least a dozen on-line messages and three phone calls. Finally while on phone got an agent to actually look at just my Jan 2016 statement (It had several hundreds of $$ of dividend income) and compare it with my Dec2016 statement that said I had received $72 for whole year. She finally came back and agreed there should be about $10k of div & interest!

What I found out while investigating this, was that the income summary on BMOIL statements, is only the income that would eventually be on T5 slips. Trust income is reported on T3 slips so is excluded. As a result, the Income figure on their reports is not the actual income you received. So why do they bother including an income summary at all seeing it does not match the actual transaction detail also reported?

What bothers me here, is that it took 3 months to get BMOIL to understand that there was an error in programming or data input to their system. Those errors don't give me any confidence that ANY of their reports are accurate.
 
#8 ·
Finally I was able to get BMOIL to correct our December Statement. at least a dozen on-line messages and three phone calls. Finally while on phone got an agent to actually look at just my Jan 2016 ...

What bothers me here, is that it took 3 months to get BMOIL to understand that there was an error in programming or data input to their system. Those errors don't give me any confidence that ANY of their reports are accurate.
... and? did you file a complaint? Are they going to fix their systems? Or did they just say "this is the way it is and go away".
 
#6 ·
Thank you for your perseverance! I suspect few look at what the brokerage account statements say with respect to monthly and YTD income received. I've never really looked at that data myself on any of my accounts. I only look what I total up on T3s and T5s at tax time (what my tax return rollup says on UFile), and what Quicken* aggregates for me when I roll up all my income from all my accounts for the year.

* Which in itself is not fully accurate because I know that some of my USD income is already posted net of withholding tax, i.e. I am recording the net number and not gross number. Which if I may ask, did you have that discussion with BMOIL? That is, if their software adds up USD account income, is it the net number net of withholding tax or gross number and do they convert at the monthly forex rate? Or annual forex rate?
 
#7 ·
Thank you for your perseverance! I suspect few look at what the brokerage account statements say with respect to monthly and YTD income received. I've never really looked at that data myself on any of my accounts. I only look what I total up on T3s and T5s at tax time (what my tax return rollup says on UFile), and what Quicken* aggregates for me when I roll up all my income from all my accounts for the year.

* Which in itself is not fully accurate because I know that some of my USD income is already posted net of withholding tax, i.e. I am recording the net number and not gross number. Which if I may ask, did you have that discussion with BMOIL? That is, if their software adds up USD account income, is it the net number net of withholding tax or gross number and do they convert at the monthly forex rate? Or annual forex rate?
... not that you can't ask agent99 these qusetions but isn't the accountholder's responsibility to figure this all of this out (fx, withholding tax, etc)? given that the brokerage don't even know what's produced on their own reports as per agent99's experience ...
 
#13 ·
I just got around to checking the "updated' December statement they had sent me by secure mail. Well, it was for the wrong account! The one with just $72.56 in annual income is still wrong. It's hard to believe a big bank can be so useless. Anyway, I have a direct line to the lady that I dealt with, so hopefully will get that fixed next week.
 
#15 ·
Okay, I'm a nervous type, so I called and spoke with a BMOIL rep. AFter about 30 minutes on hold and him waiting to speak with his supervisor, he told me that the "dividend" term under "income" meant only pure dividends. NOT fund distributions, not income trust distributions, and of course, not interest. This is a bit confusing to me the way my HISA funds refer to distribs as "dividends". Shouldn't they be called distributions, or are they called dividends because I'm reinvesting?

When I asked, they said the only category under income was dividends. Does anyone else have any other category listed, or do we all just have "dividends"?
 
#16 ·
me i think the new BOMIL statement is ghastly.

the performance calculators for every single client who does options will be wrong. Because efficient option pricing at all brokers is still back in the dark ages. Options that don't trade today show a "last price" that is quite likely to be 2-3-4 weeks old, ie it has no relationship to reality whatsoever.

the performance widget, though, is calibrated to that fake last price, so there goes the accuracy of the performance widget.

to think the IIROC spent millions of dollars forcing brokers to create this kind of gibberish. The only thing that will be more comical will be the TD's new, revised, IIROC-compliant statement, when it finally appears for the june statements. I guess these will see the light of day in july.

.
 
#19 ·
BMO has been doing this dividends-as-interest thing for many years. Long enough that the reps all know how to handle distressed calls from clients.

what about my T5s, they'll be wrong, wail the clients.

no, the T5s will be correct, the income will appear as eligible dividends, it's just on our statements that it appears wrongly as interest, say the reps.

so why don't you configure your statements correctly, go the clients.

it's easier to tell the clients to disbelieve their statements, say the reps.

.
 
#20 ·
Eclectic:

Well, as opposed to say, a cash payment from a HISA fund. How does one differentiate between a cash distribution and a fund distribution of more units? Are there proper terms for each?

Yeah, you'd think they'd itemize the various types of income. Maybe, like I said, they're warming up to add the other ones in soon.
 
#21 ·
Brainer,
As posted above, they DO distinguish between interest and dividends. However, you said you had a HISA? So far as I know the BMO HISAs are classified as mutual funds and mutual fund distributions would not show up as dividends or interest.
 
#30 ·
Regarding the December Statement. I today spoke to someone who had actually looked at what had happened.

- He told me that due to a programming error, the only income included in the income summary part of the December report, was the dividend income from non-Canadian securities.
- He said that they could not re-run the December report, but would send me a spreadsheet report that is correct.
- He said that the error was corrected for the January report and that their reports now included Canadian dividends

They are aware that the income reported does not include income from trusts and etfs. They are working on it but no implementation date yet. Thinking of adding a 3rd line below dividends and interest for "other" income which of course could include various classifications of income including ROC. So this would be different from what we eventually see on T3's and T5's.

He understood my frustration in using MyLink for communication and had gone over all the reponses. Most of which showed that the agent did not understand the basic problem. Which was simply - How did my 2016 Total Income go from $10k+ in November to $72 in December! He admitted that others have also had problems with MyLink communications

I think I am done with this. Hopefully it results in better reports and better MyLink communications. In general, I have been happy overall with BMOIL. But not usually with MyLink!
 
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