Add Manulife Bank to the HISA Chart | Site suggestions | Discussion forum

canadian.100 said

Then bottom feeders like Alterna, EQ, Motus etc should be taken off the list. Their rates are lower than Manulife. The Manulife Advantage is a combined Chequing and Savings with 2.85% and no service charges at all if u maintain a 1K balance. A good product from a large profitable FI.  

Peter manages the HISA Chart quite well. FI's are added/deleted, if & when it's warranted.

Remember that the Big FI SA's usually pay Less than 1.0% (or Nothing at all),
so those 'bottom feeders' on that chart are actually fairly good.

Dean

JohnnyCash said
Manulife Bank has seems to have changed their interest rate strategy for their Advantage account from a regular low base rate and occasional promo, to a higher everyday rate.

https://www.manulifebank.ca/personal-banking.html  

I do not think Manulife Bank needs to be re-added to the comparison chart. If I remember correctly, they've been in the chart at least once, and maybe twice. The first time they were removed because accounts had to be opened with the assistance of a mobile banking specialist who would come to your home. The second time was due to persistently low rates and ho-hum offerings. 2.85% is what I would call a "bottom-feeding" rate; it's in the bottom tier, and the account offers little to no compelling features not already offered elsewhere. Moreover, Manulife Bank is slowly eroding their own Manulife Bank ATMs as Circle Ks and Couche-Tarde locations switch from one third-party ATM servicer to multiple ATM servicers, such that eventually they'll likely no longer have a single FI behind the ATMs.

If they were offering, say, 3.5% and were to stay there for at least six months, then I think we could consider it.

Cheers,
Doug

RetirEd said
For historical sake (and research) I'd prefer to change the listed outfits as rarely as possible.
RetirEd  

While I get this reasoning, I don't think this should necessarily dictate new additions to, or, crucially, removals from the comparison chart. We could easily still provide historical rate data, perhaps via the profile pages for each financial institution and, optionally, a historical rate chart.

That said, we should continue to be conservative in new additions to the chart, given the initial 'pop' we often see in terms of premium rates, only to see them fall back to bottom feeder position.

Cheers,
Doug

cgouimet said
I prefer to keep "our" HISA and GIC lists to the main ones we're interested in. Anything else can be had at CANNEX:

https://www.cannex.com/public/depa01e.html

and

https://www.cannex.com/public/term02e.html  

+1 to this also

Briguy said
One advantage of the Manulife Advantage account ( if you keep at least 1000.00 in it ) is they have no ATM charge and no FX ATM withdrawals at any machine displaying Mastercard, Maestro, or Cirrus symbols worldwide.

Another advantage is that since Manulife Advantage debit card is part of the Exchange network you have access in the USA to over 40,000 ATMs for free at the Allpoint network.
https://www.theexchangenetwork.ca/Traveling-to-the-US.aspx

A third advantage is that it's a debit card, so you can use it at Asian restaurants, since they usually only accept cash or debit card.

I don't actually have a Manulife account so I don't know how reliably the debit card works world wide.  

But this is also true of the Motive Financial no-fee chequing and HISAs as well as Alterna Bank no-fee chequing and HISAs. Requiring a $1,000 minimum balance to waive fees, while lower than the Big Five banks, seems like an onerous requirement to me.

Manulife Bank has also recently devalued their credit cards and added fees, to the point of making them completely uncompetitive. While they may well retain their banking business, they aren't investing in the business; it's just a "meh, as long as it makes us a bit of money on the side, that's okay, but it gets none of our capital expenditures or marketing dollars" sort of business.

Cheers,
Doug

Briguy said

AFAIK you'd have to pay the banking industry customary 2.5 percent exchange rate plus interchange rate for Alterna and Motive compared to just interchange rate for Manulife's debit card at a foreign ATM.  

Oh, you were referring to the foreign exchange currency markup; I thought you said surcharge-free. It's definitely not the latter. As to the former, many credit cards offer this already, and EQ Bank offers it with it. That is an extremely niche use case unlikely to appeal to more than a few dozen people across the country. 😛