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I find this disturbing on a couple levels
February 21, 2018
11:02 pm
Rick
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I decided to throw some of my emergency fund into the 4% GIC @ CC. So I;m poking around the web site and see "Add an External Account". "Great" I think. "CC has finally joined the 21st century and I can link external accounts, so I click the button and get taken here:
https://www.coastcapitalsavings.com/TakeChargeMoneyManager/
Looks weird so I check the video, FAQ's and instruction pdf. To my surprise, it's appears to be just an on line, glorified Quicken/Money type program that keeps track of all transactions in all linked external accounts. To do that, you have to allow a 3rd party, located in the US, into all your accounts by providing institutions, passwords, account numbers, names and anything else needed to access your external accounts. Yeah right.... I can only imagine the implications of giving a US company all my financial information should there be legal action, either personal, corporate or government, US or Canadian.
The stupid thing is that it looks like once they get all that information, you still can't implement transfers from CC.
Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but just doesn't seem like a wise idea to have ALL financial information collected by a 3rd party stored in one place on line in another country. Might even be a violation of the other FI's T&C. If they found out you gave away all your info and then your account was compromised. I could see you being SOL.
Does anyone have any experience with this service?

February 22, 2018
12:04 am
Loonie
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No experience, but I share your concern.

I have noticed that it's now typical for FIs to say, somewhere deep in the fine print that transactions may be or will be pushed through the US. I just can't remember if that applies more to credit cards. I think it does, but not sure. For a while, it was possible to avoid this by boycotting one or the other FI, but it seems this is now just about impossible if not in fact impossible.

Welcome to global capitalism.

February 22, 2018
9:03 am
rhvic
Victoria, BC
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I would not go near any such service, especially one that asks for your external account information and passwords! That seems to border on extreme stupidity indeed.

February 22, 2018
10:01 am
Doug
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Rick said
I decided to throw some of my emergency fund into the 4% GIC @ CC. So I;m poking around the web site and see "Add an External Account". "Great" I think. "CC has finally joined the 21st century and I can link external accounts, so I click the button and get taken here:
https://www.coastcapitalsavings.com/TakeChargeMoneyManager/
Looks weird so I check the video, FAQ's and instruction pdf. To my surprise, it's appears to be just an on line, glorified Quicken/Money type program that keeps track of all transactions in all linked external accounts. To do that, you have to allow a 3rd party, located in the US, into all your accounts by providing institutions, passwords, account numbers, names and anything else needed to access your external accounts. Yeah right.... I can only imagine the implications of giving a US company all my financial information should there be legal action, either personal, corporate or government, US or Canadian.
The stupid thing is that it looks like once they get all that information, you still can't implement transfers from CC.
Maybe I'm being overly paranoid, but just doesn't seem like a wise idea to have ALL financial information collected by a 3rd party stored in one place on line in another country. Might even be a violation of the other FI's T&C. If they found out you gave away all your info and then your account was compromised. I could see you being SOL.
Does anyone have any experience with this service?ย ย 

Hi Rick:

That's a personal "beef" I have. When I politely challenged their social media team on Facebook now that they've partnered with a third-party personal finance tracking software provider, surely using a service such as Mint.com should not invalidate one's online banking security guarantee any longer. I had hoped for a reply that said, "great point, we've just completely invalidated our argument." Instead, she cited a legally-binding agreement between Coast and the provider as being somehow "better," even though the company they're using is smaller than Mint.com, which I think Intuit now owns. ๐Ÿ™

To be fair, though, RBC, BMO, Scotiabank, Tangerine, Vancity, First West Credit Union and others all use such internally-developed or externally-provided personal finance software tools that allow tracking of bank accounts in one place. I'm not opposed to them, in principle. What I am opposed to is the apparent "double standard" with respect to what violates, and what doesn't, the bank's online banking security guarantee. It should be modified by all to such that certain datasets (financials, sensitive ID numbers and names, birth dates, etc.) be encrypted with a standard 256 bit encryption algorithm, something like that.

Also confusing is that despite being able to link an external bank account to their Take Charge Money Manager, that doesn't link it for the purposes of Me-to-Me Transfers, which they don't offer yet and is currently my other "bone of contention."

Such matters are not material to me not further consolidating my business with Coast, though. sf-cool

For what it's worth, you can opt out of the Take Charge Money Manager but it requires a branch visit or a phone call to the Contact Centre. I suggested making the request available online, self-serve, and/or also making it purely opt-in instead of opt-out and they said they'd, of course, "consider my feedback by passing it on to the appropriate team(s)." Still, at least with Coast, you can fully opt-out (and/or back in again), if you wished. With Tangerine, I'm stuck with their seemingly "helpful" automatic categorization of my transactions that are, about 50% of the time, incorrect. ๐Ÿ™

Cheers,
Doug

February 22, 2018
12:01 pm
Marnie
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@Doug's post 4 'Also confusing is that despite being able to link an external bank account to their Take Charge Money Manager, that doesn't link it for the purposes of Me-to-Me Transfers, which they don't offer yet and is currently my other "bone of contention.'

I don't quite get how Me-to-Me Transfers work. Does it mean that a specific group of FIs has an agreement to do transfers only among themselves? I link Hubert to Tangerine so does that make it Me-to-Me Transfers? Likewise I would think that you can link an external FI to Coast Capital using CC's institution # and transit # and do a push/pull originating from the external FI to transfer your funds. The inconvenience is that the external FI can limit the $ amount of your transfer to CC.

February 22, 2018
12:49 pm
toto
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When I bought my 33 month gic and realized they couldn't link an external account, I was wondering how I was going to get my principle once it matured because i live in a rural area no where close to a coast capital.
Tangerine dropped a few cents into my coast account and I confirmed and they linked at their end. Now I just have to pull from tangerine at maturity.
Wish all FI's could link they way tangerine does.

February 22, 2018
4:11 pm
Rick
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Get a free checking account at CC. You just have to link it from your other banks. I pull out of and push into CC checking from Tang, EQ, Motive and setting up for Hubert. Not sure of their inactive account policy, but I usually move something thru it a few times a year. Linked PayPal to it just in case they get any ideas of freezing my account or making surprise withdrawals. Can't take money out of an account with nothing in it. Only thing I use it for.

February 22, 2018
4:18 pm
Rick
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Marnie said
I don't quite get how Me-to-Me Transfers work. Does it mean that a specific group of FIs has an agreement to do transfers only among themselves? I link Hubert to Tangerine so does that make it Me-to-Me Transfers? Likewise I would think that you can link an external FI to Coast Capital using CC's institution # and transit # and do a push/pull originating from the external FI to transfer your funds. The inconvenience is that the external FI can limit the $ amount of your transfer to CC.ย ย 

I borrowed this from the Noventis web site:
Me-to-Me transfer is an online banking feature which allows members to send and receive funds between their accounts and accounts they have at other Canadian financial institutions. (These transfers are allowed in Canadian and US funds as long as both accounts are in the same currency).
Using Me-to-Me transfer, money may be transferred immediately, depending on the financial institution.

In theory your money is moved and shows up instantly in/out of your account. In reality, it sits in both for a day or two or three. Your institution must be a part of the M2M program for that to happen...even if the other institution isn't.

February 23, 2018
11:10 am
Doug
British Columbia, Canada
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Marnie said
I don't quite get how Me-to-Me Transfers work. Does it mean that a specific group of FIs has an agreement to do transfers only among themselves? I link Hubert to Tangerine so does that make it Me-to-Me Transfers? Likewise I would think that you can link an external FI to Coast Capital using CC's institution # and transit # and do a push/pull originating from the external FI to transfer your funds. The inconvenience is that the external FI can limit the $ amount of your transfer to CC.ย ย 

Hi Marnie:

Me-to-Me Transfers are just a proprietary method of self-to-self, electronic bank-to-bank transfers, like Tangerine and other banks and even some credit unions use. It follows a common standard and centralized clearing function (usually one of the provincial credit union centrals) that can be implemented into any FI (bank or credit union) using Central 1 Credit Union's MemberDirect online banking platform and most third-party core banking platforms (i.e., Temeno, WealthView, Fiserv's platforms, etc.) that many credit unions use.

Some banks that use MemberDirect and, consequently by extension, Me-to-Me Transfers include:

  • Alterna Bank
  • Canadian Western Bank, including its Motive Financial division
  • ICICI Bank Canada*
  • WealthONE Bank of Canada

* Note that ICICI Bank Canada may have changed online banking platforms so this is qualified. ๐Ÿ™‚

The difference is Me-to-Me Transfers don't yet support paperless, electronic linking (i.e., micro-deposits) of bank accounts but this is changing. For instance, many credit unions will authenticate external bank accounts using an Interac e-Transfer from your external bank account so I expect this to be one of the ways. However, signing in to your external bank account's online banking via a secure "gateway" like SecureKey that the Government of Canada uses would be a great approach.

Regarding Coast, because they don't have Me-to-Me Transfers, they don't yet support bank-to-bank transfers (HSBC Bank Canada doesn't either, though they actually took this away!). Vancity is another large credit union that doesn't yet support them, unfortunately. ๐Ÿ™

As to limits, these are set by the bank or credit union, regardless of whether they use Me-to-Me Transfers or not. Also, Hubert, and Sunova Credit Union, develop both their banking and online banking platforms in-house with their own software development team, just as Tangerine does (though Tangerine uses a third-party to provide their list of available bill payees). That's why they were able to be an "early adopter". Electronic linking is coming to Me-to-Me Transfers and, by extension, CUs and banks that use it, like Alterna and Motive.

Hope that helps and provides sufficient level granular of detail for you.sf-cool

Cheers,
Doug

February 23, 2018
11:15 am
Doug
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toto said
When I bought my 33 month gic and realized they couldn't link an external account, I was wondering how I was going to get my principle once it matured because i live in a rural area no where close to a coast capital.
Tangerine dropped a few cents into my coast account and I confirmed and they linked at their end. Now I just have to pull from tangerine at maturity.
Wish all FI's could link they way tangerine does.ย ย 

Do you have access to an Exchange or Acculink network ATM? Write a cheque and deposit it that way or use the Coast Mobile Banking app and their Deposit-on-the-go feature. That's what I do, until bank-to-bank transfers come. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Very few FIs truly support fully electronic linking of external bank accounts, with Hubert Financial and Sunova Credit Union being the first in Canada (well other than maybe Ally Canada, I didn't have an account with Sunova before Ally Canada!) followed by Tangerine. I'm not aware of any others, perhaps DUCA? It's coming...the key is waiting on Central 1 Credit Union and then the banking platform providers to upgrade their systems to support whatever method Central 1 implements. Then, it has to roll out to the FIs.

Cheers,
Doug

February 23, 2018
12:44 pm
toto
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Yes we have the exchange. Thanks, another good way to access coast capital, closest branch to me is kelowna, 5 hours away.

February 23, 2018
4:17 pm
Doug
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toto said
Yes we have the exchange. Thanks, another good way to access coast capital, closest branch to me is kelowna, 5 hours away.ย ย 

No problem, which city/town are you in, by the way, toto? ๐Ÿ™‚

If it's a B.C. credit union in your town/city, then they're also part of Acculink. All Canadian credit unions are part of Acculink (ding-free.ca), with a few exceptions in Ontario and elsewhere. Most Canadian credit unions are on Exchange and many Canadian banks as well.

Cheers,
Doug

February 23, 2018
8:37 pm
Marnie
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Re: Posts 8 & 9. Thanks Rick and Doug for your detailed explanation of Me-to-Me Transfers. I didn't realise that my Tangerine links to my external FIs are Me-to-Me Transfers and that I'm already using it. On the surface it's really not much different from the links I set up at Hubert except Hubert uses micro-deposits to authenticate the account at the external FIs whereas you say Me-to-Me Transfers are not paperless electronic linking so I must have signed some papers at Tangerine to set it up initially. The FIs complicate and confuse by using different terminology like Me-to-Me Transfers, links, electronic funds transfer, pre-authorized payment/debit, pre-authorized credit, direct deposit, etc. to do the same thing. Ofcourse they want to make it confusing so that customers don't know how to transfer out their money easily.

February 23, 2018
9:26 pm
toto
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I'm in Nelson, and we have a local credit union. I will use the exchange as another option to access coast.
Happy that I could link at tangerine end though, much easier to eft.
Thanks for the help .

February 23, 2018
9:53 pm
Doug
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toto said
I'm in Nelson, and we have a local credit union. I will use the exchange as another option to access coast.
Happy that I could link at tangerine end though, much easier to eft.
Thanks for the help .ย ย 

Ah, okay, I was trying to figure it out when you said "5 hours," I was going north so I was thinking, "Williams Lake?", "Quesnel?" Nelson...nice town! Nelson and District Credit Union has a branch in Rossland, too, I think, and yes they're on Acculink as well. ๐Ÿ™‚

Yeah, that's what I do, I have Coast linked on my Implicity, Hubert, Tangerine and even Scotia iTRADE ends. Plus, as a "backup," I have it linked through PayPal.

Edit: And no problem. ๐Ÿ™‚

Cheers,
Doug

February 23, 2018
10:03 pm
Doug
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Marnie said
Re: Posts 8 & 9. Thanks Rick and Doug for your detailed explanation of Me-to-Me Transfers. I didn't realise that my Tangerine links to my external FIs are Me-to-Me Transfers and that I'm already using it. On the surface it's really not much different from the links I set up at Hubert except Hubert uses micro-deposits to authenticate the account at the external FIs whereas you say Me-to-Me Transfers are not paperless electronic linking so I must have signed some papers at Tangerine to set it up initially. The FIs complicate and confuse by using different terminology like Me-to-Me Transfers, links, electronic funds transfer, pre-authorized payment/debit, pre-authorized credit, direct deposit, etc. to do the same thing. Ofcourse they want to make it confusing so that customers don't know how to transfer out their money easily.ย ย 

No problem. And yes, Tangerine used to require a VOID cheque or bank statement to link accounts (that's how my first external account was linked). However, since then, they do the micro-deposits like Hubert does. Still, they're technically not actually Me-to-Me Transfers. Me-to-Me Transfers are a proprietary software development of Central 1 Credit Union. Tangerine has their own but it works the same way. Both use the Electronic Funds Transfer system so the "generic," if you will, term for it would be self-to-self, bank-to-bank transfers.

More information on the specific self-to-self, bank-to-bank transfer system that Central 1 Credit Union uses called Me-to-Me Transfers is available below, if you're interested:

https://www.central1.com/digital-payments/direct-banking-solutions/memberdirect-me-me-transfer

As far as terms go, I agree it's confusing because there's no common standard terminology. Basically, the "generic" terms go like this:

Electronic Funds Transfer - a type of fund transfer that clears through Payments Canada's Automated Clearing Settlement System, the same system that clears your paper-based cheques

With that, you have two types of transactions, these are the "generic" terms:
- pre-authorized debit (PAD) - DR transaction
- direct deposit (DD) - CR transaction

A pre-authorized credit could be a direct deposit but it's an internal, bank-generated term. It could also refer to a recurring internal transfer between one client and another client of the same bank or just a standing instruction between one's own accounts that don't use ACSS.

Pre-authorized payment is just a bank-specific term for pre-authorized debit. It is the same thing.

When you "push" funds out from, say, your Hubert account at Hubert, it becomes a Direct Deposit (of the EFT system) at your other bank. However, if you "pull" funds in to Hubert from within Hubert but from your other bank, it becomes a Pre-Authorized Debit (called a Fund Transfer sub-type - some banks show the FTD after the bank's name on your transaction history; HSBC Canada does this) that has special rules that say it can't be returned whereas a pre-authorized debit, for say, your FortisBC gas bill (if you're in B.C.), can be returned for any reason up to but not exceeding 90 days after the date of the withdrawal. Useful to know if you have a deceased family member and are trying to get their cell phone bill payment reversed. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Cheers,
Doug

February 25, 2018
11:04 am
Londonguy
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Doug, you seem to have intricate knowledge of back office procedures in the payments system, so let me ask you something specific about that.

I've been having a bit of a tug of war with Simplii in trying to get them to add a linked account (a savings account at Ideal, a Manitoba credit union) to my Simplii profile. We've been corresponding by both phone and secure email about it for almost a month now.

On my first attempt I submitted (1) a duly completed Simplii PAD form, and (2) an Ideal-generated EFT authorization form signed by Ideal personnel as a substitute for a void cheque (Ideal having told me that Simplii should find that acceptable)

That first request was not actioned upon by Simplii after 8 days, so I called them. The phone rep initially tried to tell me they couldn't do it, which I questioned and asked him to ask his supervisor. He went away for a bit and then came back on the line and told me they would indeed process the request within 48 hours.

So I waited another 9 days, but still no linked account in my profile, so I called again. This time the rep said that they would do it, "but only as a special favour because the first person had given me incorrect information." He also said they couldn't find my previously submitted EFT, but if I could send it again they would get right on it and add the link within 48 hours , so I made another PDF and emailed it back.

It has now been another 10 days since that second conversation and renewed promise, but there is still no link to my Ideal account in my Simplii profile. The online status of my request says that it continues to "require action on my part" which I interpret as meaning that the system is still trying to jam me for a void cheque instead of the Ideal EFT form.

So before I take them to task again, my question to you is this: is Simplii not adding my Ideal account because there's something in the payment system protocols between these 2 particular FIs that genuinely requires a void cheque even though they have all the Institution/Transit/Account numbers they need, or is Simplii just choosing to not let me do it? The answer would obviously influence the flavour of the next conversation I have with them TIA

February 25, 2018
11:20 am
Doug
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Londonguy said
So before I take them to task again, my question to you is this: is Simplii not adding my Ideal account because there's something in the payment system protocols between these 2 particular FIs that genuinely requires a void cheque even though they have all the Institution/Transit/Account numbers they need, or is Simplii just choosing to not let me do it? The answer would obviously influence the flavour of the next conversation I have with them TIAย ย 

I can give you a fairly complete answer here.

Short answer: nothing in the Canadian payments systems policies and legislation (federal Bills of Exchange Act is one of the governing pieces of legislation, if you're interested) so this would be an institution-specific problem. It could either be procedural "foot-dragging" or a problem with their internal policies. It sounds like it's more the former than the latter.

Longer answer: Since the Canadian payments industry rules and guidelines, as far as I'm aware, don't mention specific requirements to verifying accounts, this is a Proceeds of Crime (Anti-Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing) Act-related law and associated regulation. The Financial Transactions Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) publishes guidelines on the methods acceptable to verify beneficial ownership of related accounts. Current guidelines are actually more liberal than Simplii Financial has put in place as it could be either a cleared, preprinted cheque in your name (in whole or in part, in the case of a joint external chequing account; Payments Canada comes in to play in the case of joint accounts, which require two cheques or one cheque signed by both people whether the account is "joint with right of survivor"/"joint tenants-in-common" and "one to sign" or "both to sign" in terms of debits), a stamped VOID cheque form by the other external bank or even an original customer statement showing the needed information (can also be an original e-Statement PDF), which basically includes the account holder's name, address, account number and bank name, branch name (or transit number) and address. If it doesn't specify the branch address (or vice versa), that's OK because the other can be looked up through Payments Canada's Financial Institutions Directory. That said, Simplii Financial is not breaking the law because they don't have to accept all of those methods, which is kind of frustrating. Those are just methods they can accept, whichever they choose. ๐Ÿ™

I would follow up with them via secure message, ideally, or by phone and make notes.

Cheers,
Doug

P.S. As an aside, I'm actually keen to transfer my Scotia iTRADE accounts to either Qtrade Investor or Questrade but both call for a scan of one's government-issued photo ID and I've never had to provide that for brokerage accounts. I've repeatedly pointed out that in the case of non-face-to-face account openings, that's not even an accepted form of ID for account and beneficial owner verification. I've yet to hear back from their Compliance term, to whom I cited the relevant provisions of the PCAMLTF Act and related FINTRAC Guidelines. The reason is...I don't want my middle name on my account nor do I want my first name as "Douglas" (as on my photo ID) as I fear they'll add that to my credit report, which I do not want as I've been fortunate to have been able to have all my bank & investment accounts opened thus far without those pieces of information. I wish provincial photo ID-issuing government agencies were permitted to exclude middle names and allow shortened names (like Canadian passports) on the actual public ID cards but keep the legal versions internal for government bodies to access so that I wouldn't have to consider an expensive $140-200 name change process just to change my legal name from "Douglas (middle name) (last name)" to "Doug (last name)". ๐Ÿ™

February 25, 2018
5:45 pm
Marnie
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Doug said

P.S. As an aside, I'm actually keen to transfer my Scotia iTRADE accounts to either Qtrade Investor or Questrade but both call for a scan of one's government-issued photo ID and I've never had to provide that for brokerage accounts. . ๐Ÿ™ย ย 

Why are you keen on Questrade? Is it because you can buy ETFs commission free and each equity trade costs 1 cent per share minimum $4.95? I find that Questrade is good if you don't have large amounts of cash sitting in your account for long periods of time between trading. If you buy or sell an ISA that pays 1.1% interest the transaction cost is $9.95 so there goes your cheap equity trading fees. You can bring the money in from an external HISA when you see a trading opportunity but it takes about 3 days to transfer the money in and then you may miss your opportunity. Another issue that is concerning is if your account is hacked into with unauthorized transactions resulting in financial loss, you have only 4 days to inform them and then they put you through the wringer for you to prove that it's not your fault so I see little chance of getting compensation. Questrade also only reimburses transfer fee for only 1 account per client. It has its place but it is better for small accounts.

February 25, 2018
6:27 pm
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Canadaโ€™s Best Online Brokerages 2017

http://www.moneysense.ca/save/.....pfm_invest

Tangerine....Canada's best bank. LBC.............Canada's 2nd best bank.
Hubert.....worst bank in Canada.

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