Canadian Banks - An Immigrants Perspective

One of the first decisions you have to make is which bank you will bank with. It's not an easy decision

since there is not much difference between the main banks here in Canada.  I guess the first thing you will learn is that the Canadian banking system is really backwards.  Other countries are far ahead of Canada when it comes to modern banking, we have still used cheques when completing certain transactions here.

This is the list of the big banks in Canada: RBC, Scotia Bank, BMO, CIBC and TD Bank.
They all offer newcomer packages. there are often specials, for example, get an iPad when you open an account with them etc.  I don't like them because they all come with too many terms and conditions. However, it is important to compare the newcomer packages and you can decide which bank is important for you.

When we arrived we ended up going with TD Bank, our main reason was that they had the best credit limit to offer us and the Bank fees were zero if you held a balance.  Actually, that is the top priority you have when coming to Canada, you need to improve your credit score.  You can do this in a multiple of ways, use the credit card, take out a small loan, but just getting a cell phone account helps too.

Here is a comparison of the banks at the time of writing.

Bank	Minimum Balance	Monthly Fee
RBC	No minimum balance to waive the fee	$0 for the first year and then $11.95
TD Bank	$4000	$16.95
Scotia	$3000	$11.95
BMO	$6000	$17.95
CIBC	$4000	$16.95

There are quite a few low cost banks, the problem is that most are reasonably new and all a lot smaller.  Also they require you to have a bit of a credit history before they will give you anything. The reason why you want to deal with them is you can have free banking without keeping a minimum deposit. Tangerine has been around the longest as far as I know, it is now owned by Scotia Bank.  Unfortunately you won't be able to open a bank account there for at least 3 months after arriving, but that is exactly what I did.  I closed my TD account after 3 months and opened a Tangerine one.  There are other disadvantages though, for example Tangerine can't handle foreign currency.  The mortgage rate is slightly better at TD compared to Tangerine, but it was easier to get my mortgage at Tangerine than TD.

Do your research and we can show the banks that we are discerning and will choose a good bank with reasonable fees.  Another cheaper "Bank" is Simplii (owned by CIBC), also EQ Bank, Neo Financial and Koho are credit card providers with debit card accounts as an option.  I am guessing they will also require you to have your SIN number for 3 months before you can get an account with them.