 Hello everyone, this is financial author Amit Dan of amitdan.com. On this channel, you'll find financial travel and more videos just like the one you're watching right now. If you like what you see, please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing. President choice financial discontinues free banking. Hello everyone, this is financial author Amit Dan of amitdan.com. Today I'll talk about President choice financial and CIBC Bank terminating their contract to providing free banking to its customer. Let's go back 17 years, 17 years ago there's a guy at my work and all of a sudden one day he mentioned to us that there's a free banking which would provide everything we need including checking and savings accounts, free checks and everything for free and the only problem with that banking is that there's no branch or anything and we had to do everything online. Just like myself and my other colleagues, no one believed what he was saying and at first we thought it was a scam or it was a catch, there must be some sort of catch but we decided to go ahead and try it anyway and we started with a small account just to test it out whether this is true or false or this is real or a scam or there was a catch. However, it turned out to be a real thing and since then President choice financial has been my main financial institution and I've been using them since then. But this morning news broke out that CIBC which is the back office provider of President choice financial will discontinue free banking and CIBC open up its own online free banking. President choice financial has been providing free banking for Canadians for approximately two years and it has about two million customers. This is a joint venture between CIBC and Loblaws. President choice financial will provide free online banking. There are no physical locations or branches except the pavilions at Loblaws and CIBC would work as a backbone of the financial service or as a back office providing free banking to President choice financial customers. This morning the news broke out that CIBC and President choice financial have mutually agreed to break the relationship and all these accounts will move over to CIBC slowly. So what is not changing is that your banking formation for example your account number, transit number and all sort of stuff and you don't have to do anything on your side or you don't have to take any action. All the pre-authorized checking or payment deposit plan or monthly purchase plan or anything you have associated with your bank account will move over to new CIBC's platform which is called simply and everything remains the same there's no fees or anything. So what is changing is the brand name starting November 1st President choice products will be called simply and it will have this new brand name your debit card between November 1st to April 13th you'll be receiving a new debit card from CIBC with its new name simply and until then you can use your existing President choice debit card pavilions starting November 1st CIBC will start removing pavilions from Loblaws locations. These are small freestanding stalls where you can do banking at Loblaws and you will not have access to those or CIBC will start removing them in phases starting November 1st. Bank machines CIBC bank machines inside Loblaws starting November 1st to March 31st CIBC will start removing CIBC bank machines inside Loblaws so you'll not be able to use them after that and if let's say any Loblaws has its own bank machine or other bank machine that you'll be charged a fee if you do transaction however according to President choice financial you'll be notified of that fees if it happens. PC points starting November 1st you'll not be able to earn PC points for President choice financial banking or simply banking however you will still remain a program remain a member of the PC points program and the points you have already earned it will remain yours. PC MasterCard PC MasterCard will not be affected by these changes if you are a PC MasterCard owner it will be still provided by President choice financial and you will still be able to earn PC points for using PC MasterCards so PC MasterCards is not a part of the deal and is not moving over to CIBC. Let's talk about what I think. I think lots of people started banking with President choice at the first place because they didn't want to bank with CIBC or other big banks so this is going to be interesting to see how many of the customers CIBC can retain. Because from the daily banking there will be no more reverse points a lot of people will not like that and I have this feeling that CIBC will cut lots of services as well. For example right now with President choice financial you can order free checks or unlimited checks and you can have unlimited transactions but it will be interesting to see what CIBC does with these features and then there is another good thing about President choice financial that their customer service was really good. I have never heard any complaints from anyone so and whenever I call them for any problems or any issues they resolved it right away and their service was really top notch service. So this is going to be another interesting thing to say to see what happens with the customer service and what happens with other aspects. There are other options there are lots of banks offering free online banking and services. I'll just name two of them. One of them is Tangerine which is to be ING Direct and now this is a part of Scotia Bank and they have free online banking just like President choice and there is another online banking which is EQ financial they provide very good free online banking as well and there are many more online banking providing free services. So these President choice customers have options to choose a different provider if they do not like CIBC. For my own bank accounts I'll not cancel anything or I'll not do anything right away. I'll just see how CIBC handles everything and after a few months if I'm not satisfied with CIBC or simply then I'll just close my account and I'll move over to either another free banking provider or another big bank but for now I'll just stay put with CIBC. Let me know what you think whether you're thinking to close your bank accounts with CIBC or you don't mind moving over from President choice financial to CIBC or whether you'd like to just watch it for a few months and then you will make a decision or you don't mind moving over to CIBC and just continue free banking with them. So let me know all your thoughts and everything in the comment below. Thank you for watching and if you like what you see please give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing I'll be providing more financial content on this channel and also I provide other sorts of content for example travel and other videos so keep watching please subscribe and please like thank you that's all for now.