Canadian High Interest Savings Bank Accounts

This looks like a gimmick. If you have any uninvested cash sitting in a brokerage account (most brokerage cash accounts pay zero interest), what they are saying is "transfer your uninvested cash to us and we'll give you 1.05% interest on it". Well, that's nice, but you can easily transfer your uninvested cash to your bank chequing account (provided it's not registered (i.e. RRSP) cash), and from there you can transfer it to a high interest savings account of your choice (like People's Trust currently paying at 2.25% or Canadian Tire paying at 2.00%). Many people have pulled their investments out of the market and are waiting for what they think is the best time to get back in. In the meantime, brokers are making a killing off of all this uninvested cash that they don't have to pay interest on, but they know that eventually their customers will get wise and move their cash out to a high-interest savings account or other CICD-insured savings vehicle, hence offers like "Renaissance Savings". If you want my advice, invest your money in a money market fund, or move it out of your brokerage account into a high interest savings account. Either option is better than Renaissance. It's also somewhat interesting that CIBC is behind all this, especially considering that PC Financial is going through hard times with record-low interest rates and cash flowing out of their coffers like water going over niagara falls.

I'm not sure this is the right place but I would like to hear more about the problems of PC Financial and ING for example. Not a lot of info about this topic in the media that I have seen.

You are correct, Rory, and yes Ally Credit Canada Ltd. is a subsidiary of Ally Financial Inc., which also owns ResMor Trust Company operating as Ally Canada. Nonetheless, so long as people keep within their CDIC limits ($100,000 per unique depositor – and your RRSP account is separate limits from your individual non-registered account; however, your CDIC limit for TFSA is included in your non-registered account limits – details at cdic.ca), they will be fine. Once you exceed those limits with Ally, your next best bet, I would say would be (in this order):

1. Canadian Direct Financial, the virtual banking operation of Canadian Western Bank
2. Bridgewater Bank
3. Canadian Tire Bank
4. Achieva Financial (Cambrian Credit Union) or Outlook Financial (Assiniboine Credit Union) [tie]
5. AcceleRate Financial (Crosstown Civic Credit Union) or Hubert Financial (Sunova Credit Union) [tie]

I didn't include ING Direct, PC Financial or HSBC because their rates on savings accounts simply aren't high enough but would recommend them for day-to-day banking (in that order) or if you've used up your CDIC and CUDIC (or variant) limits at the above institutions. I also have not included Westoba Credit Union's MAXA Financial as I don't like their website – it's too cheap looking and they seem to small-town cheap, to paraphrase the Right Hon. Jean Chretien.

Cheers,
Doug

The Renaissance High Interest Savings Account can be bought and sold just like a Money Market Fund.
The product Code you use is Class F: ATL5001 Which I think is no advisor fee for those with online accounts. The current rate of 1.2% beats the MMFs of almost nothing.

I believe the Manulife High Interest is at 1.3% (Manulife Trust Version). The 1.5% is for fee based accounts for investors who have Investment Advisors.