# Shopping for a new bank



## Saniokca (Sep 5, 2009)

Hi,

My wife and I have many accounts across banks/brokerages and I was thinking to consolidate it all for convenience and maybe some freebies.

We have:
- ~600k in investment accounts (registered and non-registered). We do not trade actively but rebalance from time to time.
- ~70k in cash
- ~200k/yr income

Here are some things that "irk" me about our current state:
- RBC charges monthly fees on chequing accounts (we have 2).
- Questrade is sometimes unreliable.
- credit card is not as good as it used to be (mbna world cash something)

I took Scotiabank as an example. Here are some of the things that would be nice to get:
- No fees on chequing/savings accounts
- Waived annual fee on the 4% credit card (Momentum infinite)
- Pay any fees to transfer in all our investment accounts (~600k). Maybe get some welcome bonus.

Do you guys have any ideas or experience as to what is reasonable and what else I could request that they would go for? Obviously it doesn't have to be Scotia...

Thank you in advance!


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## Davis (Nov 11, 2014)

I was bringing more than $1M to Scotia iTrade and asked for a free chequing account. Didn't get it. I did get $500 per brokerage account plus the transfer fees paid for leaving the old brokers, which was pretty good. They do those offers all of the time. 2 x TFSA, 2x RRSP, 1 LIRA, 1 cash account = $$$$. I'm pretty happy with iTrade, but they didn't get my bank account. I'm still with Loblaws, which is free and worth every penny. ;-) . What's the 4%?


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## Saniokca (Sep 5, 2009)

The 4% is the momentum visa - edited now.


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## rl1983 (Jun 17, 2015)

Interesting, I signed up my mortgage with RBC. The mortgage lady was convincing me to switch from the Credit Union I was using to their banking services.

I told her that I would under the one condition that I'm not paying a red cent for anything. She ( they ) agreed, and to this day, I'm paying zero banking fees. I'm surprised with you assets, that they aren't bending over backwards to accommodate you.


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## Guban (Jul 5, 2011)

You might want to check out TD. Their all inclusive banking may fit the bill, and TD accounts link fairly well with TD Direct Investing, their brokerage arm. Not sure if you'll like their selection of credit cards, but have a look.

I would guess that most/all brokers would pick up the transfer fees.

https://www.tdcanadatrust.com/products-services/banking/accounts/chequing-accounts/all-inclusive.jsp


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## Saniokca (Sep 5, 2009)

rl1983 said:


> I'm surprised with you assets, that they aren't bending over backwards to accommodate you.


I think the issue is that we have assets in 5 different places... QT has most of the investment assets, ING has most of the cash, RBC has a TFSA and 2 chequing accounts.

I don't mind moving away from QT because we would like to change our investment "strategy" mainly to 5-6 ETFs so trading fees would be almost irrelevant (furthermore, I think the banks now offer free ETF trades for quite a large variety). Also QT only does synthetic DRIPs so I can't enjoy the discounted prices on DRIPs (I do want to have 1-2 REITs).


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## indexxx (Oct 31, 2011)

rl1983 said:


> Interesting, I signed up my mortgage with RBC. The mortgage lady was convincing me to switch from the Credit Union I was using to their banking services.
> 
> I told her that I would under the one condition that I'm not paying a red cent for anything. She ( they ) agreed, and to this day, I'm paying zero banking fees. I'm surprised with you assets, that they aren't bending over backwards to accommodate you.


Even more interesting... that is exactly why I switched from RBC to Vancity credit union after 25 years with RBC- I couldn't stand Royal's ridiculous, chiselling, and ever-increasing fees any more. Vancity gave me a better mortgage rate, a bigger mortgage, and waived my banking fees to sign up with them. I told the RBC teller what I was doing and why and he just shrugged. Now I use Vancity for everything, except I keep a free PC Financial account to save 7 cents per litre on gas, and I have TD eSeries funds in an RRSP- drawn from my Vancity account every two weeks. But all my regular banking and mortgage is with Vancity credit union.

My trading is done on Questrade in a TFSA and RRSP.


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## GPM (Jan 23, 2015)

Yep. Credit Unions are the way to go. Everything is free, business acounts accounts are super cheap. I'm with coast capital and a platinum cash back card. No points to deal with like CIBC. Have used CIBC and Scotia bank. Both as bad as rbc. Asked for a free chequing if I came over with everything. Looked at me like they didn't understand the concept. Not to familiar with other brokerages. TD suites my needs because I have an RRSP Mortgage and commingled RRSPS's. Otherwise I would likely use quest trade.


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## martinv (Apr 30, 2009)

I would highly recommend Scotia (BNS).
As a Scotia customer, you will help them maintain their dividend payout.
And I really, really appreciate that!:greedy_dollars:


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## My Own Advisor (Sep 24, 2012)

Most of the big 5 banks have a decent brokerage arm, although some are a bit better than others.

I would recommend for daily banking and chequing, go with PCF or Tangerine or a Credit Union. Avoid fees. 

Capital One has a decent suite of CCs.


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## tygrus (Mar 13, 2012)

You guys really have no concept of how a bank works. You have nothing in your portfolio they can make money off of so you are the same to them as some 15 year old opening their first bank account. Your cash will sit idle and your 600k investment will go in one time and never be traded again. The bank made about $500 bucks off of you for this.

Banks compete for you when you have a loan with them, thats how they make money. You have a 25 yr mortgage at 4%, they cna book that into their profit base.


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## NorthernRaven (Aug 4, 2010)

You might want to take a look at TD's All-Inclusive Plan. If you keep a $5000 minimum balance in the chequing account, the normal $30/month fee is waived, and it gives you unlimited transactions, free non-TD ATM transaction worldwide. This will also waive the annual fee for one of three of their premium credit cards. It also provides a free small safe-deposit box (or $60 credit on a larger one) and other goodies. Especially at current interest rates, the foregone after-tax interest on $5000 is a pretty small amount, and makes this a pretty good deal.

BMO has a similar fee-waiver program. If you need a a second chequing account I think that would be covered there too (at TD you'd probably need a separate $2000-$4000 balance for whichever second chequing account you wanted), but they don't have the premium credit-card fee waiver.

The nice thing about about the TD (and BMO) fee-waiver is that it is not only free, but it isn't tied into to your brokerage patronage. If you want to use brokerage X you are free to do so, or you can use TDDI for the convenience of having things in one place.


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