Goodbye MAXA Financial, likely effective on or shortly thereafter January 1, 2025 | Page 2 | MAXA Financial | Discussion forum

I received an email from Assiniboine officially advising that the MAXA brand will be merged into Outlook Financial, and that the migration of the MAXA platform to Outlook will occur over the Oct. 9 - 12 Thanksgiving weekend.

I mean that services are being cut, branches closed, phone hours reduced. More cuts to force people to on-line banking and get blamed for any oopsies they suffer. Note what doug said.

I find it odd that Maxa is still taking sign ups on their web site, rather than directing new folks over to Outlook. Seems like a lot of work to onboard new clients a couple months before migrating them.

AltaRed: Basic banking services are not "goodies."

RetirEd said
AltaRed: Basic banking services are not "goodies."  

We have had this debate a number of times. Online banking along with ATMs (for those still insisting on cash and depositing cheques) is now the basic banking service.

It is my view brick and mortar will continue to decline as foot traffic continues to disappear. In our city of about 50,000, there is at most one brick and mortar branch left for each FI (including local CUs by the way). There is rarely anyone beyond business banking in these empty shells and rarely more than one teller station staffed. I fully expect we will see most of these stand alone buildings be vacated for small bays in a strip mall over the next 10-20 years. More and more of the proprietary ATMs are now located in gas stations, convenience stores, etc.

Swimming against the tide is futility. Embrace it, just as we transitioned from horse and buggy to automobiles.

everhopeful said

It would for sure hit their reputation hard. But if really bad days arrived and they don't have enough funds to cover everyone's deposits, would they prioritize covering Manitobans first before out-of-province depositors?  

I think they would find a way to honour their liabilities at the expense of government services.

It seems most people have either a bank account or a CU account per this undated submission https://www.canada.ca/content/.....efc-03.pdf Apparently some 3% are unbanked and 15% are underbanked. From CBA, if you believe CBA, the number is even less. https://cba.ca/article/banks-a.....-consumers

So yes, there are those on the margin who are 'shut out' so to speak. In which case, some brick and mortar presence is necessary. However, it does not mean service levels need to be as high as they are today (hours, branches, et al) which was triggered initially by post #19. I suspect many of the brick and mortar branches in my city will disappear in the next 10 years. A few storefront operations here and there would suffice for those that actually need physical service.

Proprietary ATMs do not charge for transactions, e.g. RBC ATMs for those with RBC accounts. I agree white label ATMs are a different animal. Most people are well served by brand (proprietary) ATMs if they don't want to do online banking.

Anecdote: The last time I 'had' to go in to a physical branch was to get a bank draft in 2020 to complete a vehicle purchase. I am not aware of what other transactions would need to be initiated at the physical branch level.

RetirEd said
My primary point above is that:

The overwhelmingly vast majority of Canadians have zero stake in bank profits.
In fact, more that half of Canadians have zero savings, let alone investments.

And...If there's no ATM around for your institution, you face the fees.  

That may be true for banks but CU members have a stake in CU profits, at least indirectly through presumably more competitive rates. I would think most members should thus welcome efforts to reduce costs (service levels) rather than be distressed about them....which is what is happening in this case.

The RBC Meeting Place branches are similar. No teller stations actually.

One is directed to a nearby RBC full-service branch when one needs full traditional teller services.

Only Oaken is straff-starved among the institutions I deal with in Vancouver. The others have line-ups sometimes, but 3-7 stations, and most of them will call those waiting to another counter when there's a line-up, like the business or new account desks. Oaken wants an appointment, but I can call just before heading there to have them wake one up.