Canadian High Interest Savings Bank Accounts

Ryan,

It is true. All "virtual" banks and credit union-operated financial institutions do an enquiry on your credit bureau to verify your identity (name, address, ID, etc.), along with your cleared cheque drawn on a Canadian financial institution. It's required under relevant federal laws governing money laundering and terrorism financing and also for Banks to do their due diligence in ensuring a person is who they say they are ("know your customer").

It shouldn't affect your credit score more than several points with each enquiry unless you have a lot of enquiries in a short time frame. I would recommend having no more than two or three enquiries per year and hopefully that would have a minimal effect on your credit rating.

Hope that helps,
Doug

They may do a credit check by default to determine things like whether or not to hold your deposits at the ABM and how much of a "cashback" limit to give you and that would be disclosed in the personal banking agreement and/or on the signature card you would've signed. However, you do have a right to refuse a credit check opening a new account in-branch (not opened online, unfortunately). State that upfront and then they won't. You just may have to have holds on your deposits.

Hope that helps,
Doug