1% transfer in promo | Page 6 | Meridian Credit Union | Discussion forum

Jim Sherat said
rk said '...I sent Meridian a secure message with the statement attached.'

I'm admittedly naive on this subject, and welcome any input, and as an example, on Friday Meridian rep emailed confirmation of my wife's TFSA direct transfer and a copy of the resulting GIC certificate was attached.

I was a little surprised (concerned) as we just use regular gmail, and I don't recall requesting a copy of the GIC certificate in this manner. Gmail does indicate the security lock icon, and https: // but is that really secure, given the very specific and personal details outlined within the GIC certificate?
My preference would have been to pick up a hard copy at the branch, or access and print online, if it is available to do so ?
Thanks for any input on this rk, or anyone.  

All I can say is that I am also surprised that they did not use the secure message ... or maybe they did both (use secure message and email).|Did you log in and check the secure messages?

My wife is also transferring out from Tangerine into Meridian some of her RRSP funds. We tried a different approach this time. She started this from our local Meridian branch on Friday Feb. 22nd. Already called Tangerine a few times and Meridian once. Tangerine took more than one week to confirm that they received the transfer out form - which was first faxed on Feb. 22nd, according to Meridian rep - and that everything on the form looks good. Tangerine rep just told us that it will take 4-6 weeks for them to transfer the money to Meridian - and that this is standard procedure. In 2019, for an online bank? Looks like this delay may wipe out most of the extra interest that Meridian will pay compared to Tangerine. I understand that Tangerine is not happy with people transferring money out ... but - in our case - this is a direct consequence of their policy. They are no longer very competitive for rates and - in our case - they did not want to match the GIC posted rate from Meridian, so what choice did we have, but moving our money out.

rk:
Tangerine certainly didn't take 4-6 weeks to transfer spouse's RSP a year or two ago. 2 weeks. It's the "busy season", but they ought not to take that long, and perhaps won't.

There is an agreement among banks about how long they are supposed to take. This info is available somewhere online but I don't know where, nor can I remember exactly how long it is. I think maybe 3-4 weeks.

Yes, you will lose some interest, but you will be rid of them!

dentgal said
I just looked at the Meridian website and I don't think that they are offering the 1% bonus anymore.
So, the provincial Ontario Deposit Insurance Corporation will insure up to $250,000?? is this correct?? I am nervous!
I'm looking at the 3.25% 18 month GIC.
Does anyone know how they calculate the interest? Would they compound it after the first year?
Thank you.  

There may be other ways to get around the deposit insurance limit, such as holding some assets in your own name and some jointly. When Motus Bank formally takes in customers and deposits, you could also open an account with them, insured to $100,000 per unique depositor with CDIC, and then also have $250,000 per depositor with Meridian Credit Union (Motus' parent company) through DICO.

Nevertheless, Meridian Credit Union is the 5th or 6th largest credit union in Canada that is roughly the size of Tangerine Bank in terms of deposits and larger than Tangerine in terms of mortgages. They're a well run organization. If anything, Meridian would likely be one of the large Ontario credit unions called upon by DICO to absorb a troubled small Ontario credit union into its operations. A few years ago, they acquired Desjardins Credit Union in Ontario, which used to be known as the Province of Ontario Savings Office, apparently.

Cheers,
Doug

Loonie said
The Meridian transfer offer stated that it would end Feb 28, and it did.
There is no limit on DICO insurance on Registered funds. The 250K only applies to non-registered.

Meridian is the largest CU in Ontario. I too think it is well run and I have money there.

Province of Ontario Savings used to be run by the Ontario govt, so they stood behind it directly. It was a great institution in its day and always had superior rates. Fell victim to one of those sell-off sweeps.  

Thanks for clarifying that DICO insurance is unlimited on registered funds (assume that includes RRSPs, RRIFs, and TFSAs, each separately?). I wasn't aware of that, but being in B.C. and not being a member of an Ontario credit union, guess that makes sense.

Yeah, Meridian's CEO, Bill Maurin, appears occasionally on BNN Bloomberg and I've found him to be highly competent, thoughtful, and strategic. He's a good manager that seems to be earning his (likely) generous wages.

As for Province of Ontario Savings Office, yeah, I think Mike Harris sold it off? Too bad. B.C. used to have the Bank of British Columbia, a provincial Crown corporation started by W.A.C. Bennett, that would ultimately be run into liquidation in what became the largest bank failure in CDIC + Canadian history. Fortunately, though, as far as I know, HSBC acquired all of its assets and liabilities, so I'm not even sure if anyone lost any savings (I think not?).

Cheers,
Doug

Loonie said
Once again, I amended while you were typing! See update.

And, while you're cataloguing those ebooks, can you get the info to align with the info for other versions of same book? TPL shows reviews (PWR, LJ etc), and these are often missing from some versions, so you have to go back and get the hard copy version. Nuisance.
Hey, I'll complain to anybody I can get hold of in the library biz!  

No problem, Loonie. Thanks for the added clarification on DICO registered account types - that's a complete list!

As to the library cataloguing issue you're reporting, I assume you mean the publisher reviews (Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, etc.) that accompany different catalogue records, right? In some formats, the reviews don't appear whereas in others, they do, correct? If so, that's, interestingly, not a cataloguing-related issue. Those publisher reviews are likely fed (i.e., RSS, perhaps?) in the catalogue records automatically by the library's ILS (integrated library system). It could be that those reviews were only for a certain format and thus correctly associated to the correct formats. Or, it could be that the data source doesn't correctly associate it with multiple formats of the given title(s). I would try raising the issue with Toronto Public Library with their publisher review data source provider and, hopefully, it can get fixed.

At any rate, I'm now closer to zeroing in on which part of Ontario you reside in...up until now, I had absolutely no idea. Part of me thought the Thunder Bay area, part of me thought Kingston or Peterborough for some reason, and then still other parts thought either of Toronto or cottage country.

The following, in two parts, is an example of one of the e-books (which is fictitious) that I had to catalogue:

Figure 1: Part 1 - Catalogue record of fictitious e-book.

Figure 2: Part 2 - Catalogue record of fictitious e-book.

Cheers,
Doug

Hi Loonie,

I'll reply to your post and, if Peter wants, he can split this post and the preceding two (2) posts off from it into a new thread and then move the new thread to an off-topic social cafe-type discussion forum.

Setting aside the publisher reviews issue, I'll try and answer some of your questions:
* If an author's name doesn't include the year of birth or the designation "author," there are two reasons, one for each problem. On the year of birth, authors' names are controlled by authority records, which attempt to locate all books that a library has for a given author under that given author's name in one form of name. Until last year or so, Library and Archives Canada created the authority records for Canadian authors in a centralized authority repository called Canadiana Authorities. However, since it's outsourced the national cataloguing operations to OCLC via Voilà that I mentioned on here previously, it has joined the Library of Congress' Names Authority Cataloguing Organization ("LC NACO"). It still does create authority records as an LC NACO member, but creates them within the single LC Authorities database. If it's a local author that doesn't have an authority record in LC, then the library is supposed to/has to create a local authority record. On some records not having an "author" designation, this depends on the cataloguing standard used (in the example record I showed you from my homework that I created, it's using the newer RDA standard; previous standards include AACR2 and AACR that don't use those designations and also which abbreviate certain words (p. instead of pages; ill. instead of illustrations)
* That the "Summary" pertains to a different book...do you mean an older edition of the same book and it's slightly different or a completely different book entirely? In either case, it's likely that TPL's cataloguing staff copy catalogued an existing record from LC or OCLC (Online Computer Library Center, which owns the Dewey Decimal Classification system, among other things) that either (a) didn't have a summary or (b) had a summary for a different edition of the same book. In either case, that is sloppy cataloguing and when you see something like this, you should raise it to the library so they can get it corrected. That's the only way to get things fixed.

Hope that covers your questions. 🙂

Cheers,
Doug

Jim Sherat said
rk said '...I sent Meridian a secure message with the statement attached.'

I'm admittedly naive on this subject, and welcome any input, and as an example, on Friday Meridian rep emailed confirmation of my wife's TFSA direct transfer and a copy of the resulting GIC certificate was attached.

I was a little surprised (concerned) as we just use regular gmail, and I don't recall requesting a copy of the GIC certificate in this manner. Gmail does indicate the security lock icon, and https: // but is that really secure, given the very specific and personal details outlined within the GIC certificate?
My preference would have been to pick up a hard copy at the branch, or access and print online, if it is available to do so ?
Thanks for any input on this rk, or anyone.  

We were on vacation, just got back. My wife's GIC was opened on March 8th, so Tangerine did not take long to transfer the money out, which is great. However, the GIC certificate - sent to us through a secure message - is an MS Word document - UNSIGNED - called Term Deposit Receipt.
Jim, is this what you got, as well? Or was it a signed PDF?

Loonie said
If you are in-branch, you get a signed one, so you could ask for that, regardless of how it gets to you.  

Loonie, thank you so much for your advice. My wife asked for a signed PDF ... and she got it, as a secure message (visit to branch was not necessary).

Much appreciated!

I loved Province of Ontario Savings--my first bank when I had my first summer job with the Ontario Government at the Ministry of Correctional Services working for the head clergy of the Jail systems when I was 16 years old--at Dundas and University. The original one account-free chequing-high interest rate bank. Even my Dad used the same bank. Such a shame when the government sold it off to Desjardins--it was never the same. I didn't realize that Meridian took over Desjardins. Thank you for the clarification and history lesson.