However, things that are too good tend to disappear. Over the past couple years the rates for EQ Bank have dropped a bit, now at 2.5%. You can see their rates here. Still a competitive rate, and a very easy to use website, but there are better options in the market
The EQ Bank savings account does have some nice features, including free etransfers and bill payments, no minimum balance and an easy to use interface. However, they don’t have a debit card so it really isn’t practical to use on a day to day basis.
If you are opening an account why not use my referral code? We both get $20.
As per my last post on Outlook they took over Implicity and merged all the accounts. I found the process okay, with a couple bumps getting our new logins, but overall not too bad.
My fears of Outlook being lower than Implicity rates seem to be unfounded. Overall their HISA rates appear to be in line with what I received before, and their GIC rates are also very competitive. As of Jan. 2023 you can get 3.25% on all deposits which is one of the best mainstream rates I have seen. You can check out their current rates here.
There are some drawbacks to Outlook, their website and mobile app are limited at best. In particular you can’t transfer money from external accounts from their mobile app, which makes it nearly useless. You also can’t open up GIC’s from their sites, you have to phone in or do it via an online form. Not a great experience, but I don’t need to do that often so I guess it isn’t the end of the world either for so much higher rates than the big 5 banks or Tangerine.
I was an early saving with ING Direct, and at the time it was one of the best High Interest Savings (HISA) accounts you could get. Then they were bought by Scotia Bank and renamed Tangerine, and for a while it was still okay.
However, over the past couple years the value of Tangerine has really dropped off a cliff. They are no longer really competitive in any of their savings products, with a current rate of 1% vs. 3.25% with Outlook Financial. You can see Tangerine’s rates here.
I still keep my accounts for nostalgia, but I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone I liked.
This post follows up on my previous post for GoPeer results. As I had in that post I reduced my risk tolerance to C or higher, and continued with an auto-deposit
It was nice that GoPeer fixed their Net Annualized return during 2022. This makes looking at results far more fair, and informative. While gross returns are interesting, they are quite deceiving as I pointed out last year as you have a lot of charge-offs with these consumer loans. The number that matters is what you get to keep after all the fees, charge-offs, etc.
So lets take a look at our 2022 results below:
As you can see the gross yield looks great, but after 15 charged off loans it comes down to a much more realistic 8.2%. This still is considerable better than you can get at any bank, but is a much higher level of risk.
With the higher interest rates now available from Outlook Financial or EQ Bank the performance delta has really narrowed. Given that I turned off my auto-deposit in January 2023 and plan to just let the current principle and returns keep getting auto-invested. We will see what happens this year!
I enjoy the idea of lending people money directly, and GoPeer certainly seems to have a good volume. However, it is all consumer based and certainly I think there is more risk with consumers in many ways, especially in Canada with such high consumer debt.
So I tried a business lending platform called LendingLoop. It has a nice interface, and like others you can setup both auto-investing as well as auto-deposits. The big difference is the volume of loans. While I never have cash sitting idle with GoPeer, it is quite common with LendingLoop. It seems like a struggle to invest funds.
To combat this I used a higher per loan amount and still I have had trouble getting loans. I do use the same grades as GoPeer – A+ to C.
For 2022 the gross returns seemed reasonable, and LendingLoop doesn’t show you need returns, but after some quick match it looks like a net interest rate around 7 or 8%. This probably isn’t worth the risk in many ways, but I will leave the initial investment in the account and let it auto-invest and see what happens.
I have been auto-investing a little bit each month on the goPeer Peer to Peer (P2P) lending platform for the past year and a bit. This post is to provide some real world results of their platform.
Overall the investing process is very straight forward with auto-invest. I had set it to invest the same amount on loans graded C- or higher a year ago.
Looking at my results for the year below I was concerned as my delinquent amounts are nearly as much as my total earnings.
Results after a year or so
This is obviously not great, so I did another level of investigation looking at the amounts in Delinquent status. Mostly they are late but at least one is classified as in default (but not charged off I guess). Interesting 100% of my Delinquent loans are rated at C-. Given this I changed my auto-invest to be C or higher.
Overall the experience has been pretty good, and I plan to continue making regular monthly contributions so see things improve over the coming year. The rates are very strong even on B and C loans, and I would rather take a little less interest and get paid back!
If you are interested in anything leave a comments, and it would be great if you used my referral code so we can both get $30. You just have to open an account and invest $1000.
Over the past year and a bit I haven’t used my Implicity account a ton as I have been getting better rates from EQ Bank. However, I still have some savings at Implicity. As you may have heard they agreed to merge (aka be acquired) by Assiniboine Credit Union (ACU). I assume Implicity will be absorbed into Outlook Financial .
Assuming that my account will be moved into Outlook I expect a reduction in rates of about .1 to .2% as from my observations they are consistently a little lower than Implicity. I assume that ACU doesn’t need the deposits as bad.
I also see we are getting a new website which is good.
There are a number of high interest savings options in Canada. As I have said before I used Tangerine (previously ING Direct) until their rates went in the toilet after Scotia Bank bought them. I was working in the credit union system at the time and so found Implicity. It is a online only brand from Entegra Credit Union in Manitoba buy available to anyone in Canada. Overall I like them and use them.
Overall Experience
Implicity’s website is basic, as is their online experience. Overall it was a bit of hassle to set up having to manually provide a couple of things, however, it wasn’t crazy. Once setup you get a debit card number and can start logging in. Setting up accounts involves sending in a form with your banking information and getting it linked to your account. Once setup you can move money via EFT’s at no cost. You also get the interest on the day you initiate the transfer which is nice. Like EQ Bank there are no minimums and no fees. Also you can pay bills, send eTransfers and setup multiple accounts. Unfortunately with Implicity you have to send an email to add or change the name of accounts.
They offer a full range of accounts from savings, GIC, TFSA and RRSP options.
Rates
Current rates are competitive generally with other providers. They are currently less than EQ Bank but over time have consistently been better than Tangerine . Credit Unions are insured by their provincial government (so Manitoba in this case) for 100% of deposits as described here no matter where you live in Canada. Given Federal insurance is capped at 100,000 per account type per institution that could impact some people.
Mobile App
Terrible. Don’t download it. You can pay bills, deposit cheques, and inter-account transfers, but you can’t transfer money to external accounts – and isn’t that the entire point?
While looking at savings possibilities, one area that was always of interest was Consumer P2P lending (Person to Person) lending. This is where a lot of banks make considerable money, and certainly the rates people pay to credit cards and payday lenders is exorbitant. Personally I support trying to help people achieve financial health, and if you are paying 20% interest that isn’t going to be easy.
While Lending Club is quite popular in the US, there hasn’t been a similar service available in Canada until recently. goPeer is one such company, and advertises itself as the Lending Club of Canada.
Along with Lending Loop goPeer is federally regulated which means anyone can invest up to $10,000 per year in similar platforms. If you want to invest more than that a year you need to go through the accreditation process with goPeer.
Experience
The Investor sign up experience was pretty straight forward. Once again they use Plaid like with EQBank for linking accounts. There wasn’t an easy way to add non-Plaid working accounts and you can only add one account so pick one you can get money in and out of easily. Standard know your customer questions and you are ready to go.
Once the account is setup, you will have the ability to invest in consumer loans. The market place provides a fairly robust list of loans available. You can click on each one and read more about them like what the loan is for, applicant location, credit score, income, etc.
After the first few times clicking around, it gets pretty boring unless you plan is to invest large amounts. If you are investing the minimum $10 the time to review the applicant is costing more than the $10. So I turned on the auto-invest feature and selected the loan grades I was interested in (decided anything above a D) and the amount per loan ($30 for now).
Results so far
There are lots of people saying they have seen pretty high delinquency and write offs which would really impact returns. So I am quite interested in seeing how that plays out.
The marketplace seems to have a pretty robust set of loans so money is being invested reasonable quickly even at $30 a loan. Much better than Lending Loop.
After a little over a month I have invested in 17 loans, have 14 more pending (waiting for full funding and completion). The portfolio page provides a good detailed overview of what you have in place, and has a nice summary chart you can click on slices to drill down on.
Referral
Why not use my EQBank referral code? We both get $30 if you invest $1000 or make your first payment. I have to pay for my blog hosting somehow 🙂
This post is to review the savings accounts of EQ Bank. Over the years I have tried to find a reasonable High Interest Savings account for any temporary or long term savings I might have. Things like an emergency fund are best kept liquid (in my opinion) in a vanilla account. I have tried quite a few out and ran across EQ Bank mainly because they were one of the first cloud core banking (which is what I work in) and they used the Temenos core. They were written up here.
In any event they do have pretty good savings rates, and had an interesting 3 month GIC rate that was pretty attractive. Their longer term GIC rates weren’t great, but that’s fine.
Sign Up
The sign up was pretty painless as they use Plaidwhich connected to my Tangerine account quickly and easily. My First Calgary Credit Union account is not available in Plaid, but hurrah they had a manual connection option. I entered my transit, branch and account manually, then EQ made a couple of micro deposits. I entered these into the EQ site a couple days later and voila I was connected. For interest you can also connect your high interest savings accounts together, like to Implicity, to speed the move of money to better rates
Account Features
Since then I moved some savings in which I plan to split into 2 90 day terms 45 days apart just so I have quicker access to half if it was ever needed. One feature I really like is it shows the interest earned in your GIC as of the night before.
There were a few things I would improve. There is no way to auto renew a GIC, which would be much better and is pretty standard for sites.
The account has a few other good features including free eTransfers, no minimum balance and cheaper international transfers. It also has the ability to pay bills, so could be a pretty robust overall account for saving for a larger annual fee (i.e. life insurance) or to put a bonus in and then pay certain bills or eTransfers from.
Mobile App
The site is well designed and I would say a pretty robust mobile app with all the information you need and the ability to deposit cheques.
Referral
Like many new services EQ Bank offers a referral program. Why not use mine here! If you use it we both get $20
Overall
I have moved the bulk of our savings to EQ Bank so I guess I had better give it 5 stars! We’ll see how it goes over the coming months, but for now it seems great.
