I worked with financial institutions in Canada for over forty years. In my retirement, I became a user of financial services rather than a provider of financial services. In that transition, I began to discover how personal banking has changed in Canada.
As a user of financial products, you need to be on your toes all the time. You need to be aware of the available services. You need to ask a lot of questions. And you most of all need to increase your financial literacy. Not in the sense that you make financial decisions like investments and retirement planning, but just the things that you need to do day to day. The mundane, ordinary, routine things.
The purpose of my blog (website) is to provide information on the not-so-obvious products and services that the bank provides so that you can get things done more smoothly. In the absence of having this information, you will complicate your life more than you know.
It’s not easy, but in the current financial services world, you need to be your own advocate. In my opinion, you cannot rely on anyone anymore to give you all the information you need about bank products and services and how you interact with the bank.
Here is just one sample of how Canadians feel, and this one is probably more polite when expressing Canadian’s frustrations: Amid financial stress, nearly half (46%) of Canadians are open to banking alternatives to manage their money.
My website will evolve; more to come on that. But for the time being, I hope you will find the topics discussed of interest as you go through the posts.