I was turned down by Motive again. Why? | Motive Financial | Discussion forum

The physical Canadian Western Bank branches aren't going to use the same identity verification as online-only Motive Financial. Once a financial institution completes the face-to-face government photo ID method, there is no need for the insititution to also do the credit file method or dual-process method. FINTRAC only requires one of the five methods to be performed.

According to their FAQ, Motive uses Equifax to verify identity:

Whats my Social Insurance number (SIN) used for?

We use your SIN for income tax reporting on interest earned on your account. We also use your SIN to verify your identity by running an Equifax® deposit inquiry. Under The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, your deposit inquiry acts as a second piece of identification. To get this report, your SIN is used for accuracy in matching personal information.

When you apply for an account you can opt out of using your SIN for identification purposes. If opt out, Motive will obtain a deposit inquiry to verify your identify using other information in your application.

Without your SIN, the credit report may not be complete or accurate and may affect our decision to open your account.

I would start by requesting a copy of the credit record at Equifax Canada. The Equifax record needs to be three years or older and have info from at least two different sources to satisfy the credit file method.

I haven't seen the term "deposit inquiry" used before. That may be a reference to Equifax Canada's Deposit Alert service for businesses:

Product Overview
Deposit Alert is an invaluable source of information containing data on individual bank account misuse. If an applicant has had a deposit account closed due to misuse, with Deposit Alert, you’ll know.

Help identify and avoid risky customers and prospects before they harm your bottom line with Deposit Alert. With access to this centralized automated database you can easily identify which of your credit applicants might be negatively impacting your business.

Could be someone with similar info has been blacklisted for deposit account abuse.

I'm guessing credit rating

piggybank said
I emailed them and here's their response:

Hello,

We do not have access to any unapproved applications, however, there are a few common reasons for this:

Information applied with is incomplete,
Information applied with does not match your credit file,
Your credit file does not meet our requirements,
Applied using a VPA, corporate or public internet,
Applied using a work or public computer,
Applied from a location not local to Canada, etc.

If you have any additional questions, please give us a call to discuss this further.

Thank you,

  

That's actually quite a helpful response. Have you looked at a copy of your online consumer disclosure from TransUnion and your free by mail consumer disclosure from Equifax? Did you keep a digital PDF of the online forms you submitted? Compare the latter to the former, and see where there may be a mismatch. If not a mismatch, do you have Apple iCloud Private Relay or Cloudflare Warp+ turned on, do you use the Opera or Brave web browsers (which have built-in VPNs), do you have a Google One subscription with their free Google VPN turned on by default, do you use the Tor web browser, did you apply from work or school? Those would be the second most likely reasons.

The third one is a bit tricky. If that is the case, I would recommend phoning them and asking them to correspond directly with you via postal mail if they cannot divulge private information via e-mail, and ask for more specifics. If they refuse, escalate it as a complaint to their (CWB) Senior Manager office and/or Customer Complaints Office. Under the Access to Basic Banking Regulations, something you don't have with provincially-regulated credit unions, you have the right to complain to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada and say you were not provided with an opportunity to open a limited basic banking account in Canada. "Basic banking" doesn't include the right to have a debit card with a cash back (i.e., no holds on deposits, other than the first $100, in most circumstances) limit, but you should be able to open a basic savings account or a chequing account without paper chequing privileges (they have few exceptions to this). 🙂

That being said, Motive Financial is likely finally in rapid decline, with customer growth that may be negative (i.e., customer closures outpace new customers) and its deposits have been negative for two years, down about 20% in the past two years ($1 billion in deposits to $800 million). (These are Motive Financial branch transit total deposits; CWB's deposits are much higher, obviously, but they illustrate the state of this deposit gathering channel for CWB.)

If it is just their HISA, it's not even competitive, really. Dust off your brokerage account and grab a brokerage ISA, HISA ETF, or short-term (1-3 month) Treasury Bill ETF like CBIL.

Hope that helps,
Doug

n.b. They have access to unapproved applications; I suspect they just can't discuss them via unsecured channels like e-mail, hence you may have to go with a formal postal mail complaint up the complaint funnels. FCAC can be a parallel complaint venue to the Senior Manager-->Customer Complaints Office-->Internal Bank Ombudsman-->OBSI-->Federal Court of Canada process.

Norman1 said

Doug said

… Under the Access to Basic Banking Regulations, something you don't have with provincially-regulated credit unions, you have the right to complain to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada and say you were not provided with an opportunity to open a limited basic banking account in Canada. "Basic banking" doesn't include the right to have a debit card with a cash back (i.e., no holds on deposits, other than the first $100, in most circumstances) limit, but you should be able to open a basic savings account or a chequing account without paper chequing privileges (they have few exceptions to this). 🙂
…

That complaint will go nowhere; the Bank Act subsection 627.17 (1) right requires one to apply in person through a natural person:

Opening

627.17 (1) Subject to subsection (2), a member bank shall, at any point of service or any branch in Canada at which it opens retail deposit accounts through natural persons, open a retail deposit account on the request, made there in person, of a natural person who …

Consequently, there is no right to open an online-only bank account through a web server which is not a natural person.  

Fair enough. Thanks for the reminder. I suspect that may be an near- to medium-term avenue for legislative amendment, though. Easy win as a consumer friendly pre-election promise by an incumbent or challenger government that costs government nothing (other than a bit of paper for printing the draft and final legislation and related materials).

Cheers,
Doug

I agree that email response from Motive is quite helpful to eliminate reasons by exception, but the OP also has not indicated s/he has phoned them since the July 10th post to find out 'why'.

To be fair. I had allowed my Motive account to lapse through no activity. I called and they opened a new account for me and also gave me some free cheques.

Did anyone's application for a chequing/savings account get decined by any financial institution BUT Motive?
I never heard that it was a thing, anywhere in the world where I bank. This is the 1st time in my long life that an obscure financial institution dares to ban me for 6 months from applying for their accounts, for no obvious reason.
I bank with dozens of institutions worldwide, and in many decades no one dared to just throw me out the door w/o giving me a reason.
To say that I am furious is a huge understatement. If this is a Canadian thing, if Canada allows this, then this country is in serious trouble, mentally and ethically.

smayer97 said
Got around this by applying for another product... 

How? As soon as one applies with the same email address/phone# Motive boots them for 6 months. There is no choice of products offered at that point.