Tag Archives: statements

Oaken Financial Stops Sending Paper Statements and How to Enroll and Find Electronic Statements

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I’ve been a happy customer of Oaken Financial for several years. We keep part of our emergency fund in GICs at Oaken. Each GIC has a one-year term, but we have 12 of them. One matures each month because if we needed to live off our emergency fund we know we’ll need income steadily each month to pay the bills. Oaken allows us to buy our GICs online very quickly and easily making renewals simple. (I don’t like automatic renewals because I never know if my plans for this money may change.) Recently, in the spring of 2018, Oaken announced they will be stopping mailing paper statements and transaction receipts so I signed in to find out what, if anything, I need to do.

Do I Need Paper Bank Statements and If So for How Long?

According to the CRA you have to keep records of your income for 7 years for tax purposes. We get a T5 for our interest income from Oaken Financial for our bank account and our GICs each spring. To be on the safe side, though, I prefer to keep our account statements for 7 years too. So I will be keeping the electronic copy of our bank statements on a secure removable device just in case of an audit.

How to Find My Oaken Financial Statements and Transactions Online

Here’s how I found my electronic versions of my account and GIC information.
Sign in to Oaken Financial.

Across the top of the screen is a set of tabs:

  • Home
  • Account Management
  • Transfer
  • Service Centre
  • Open New Account
  • Documents & Statements

Reviewing, Printing and Saving Your Oaken Financial Monthly Bank Statement

  1. Click on the tab Documents & Statements.
    A new row of tabs is displayed:
    Statements
    Confirmations
    Tax Slips
    Preferences
    The default selection is Statements and under that tab the default choice is Monthly Savings Account Statements.
  2. From the Account drop-down list, select the bank account you are interested in reviewing.
    When I selected our Savings Account, a list of links to our 2018 monthly statements was provided. There is also a tab to look at our 2017 statements.
  3. Click on the link for the monthly statement you wish to review.
    A PDF version of the same monthly statement we used to receive in the mail is displayed.
    You can use the usual print and download icons to print or electronically save your statement to a computer or storage device.
  4. When you are finished, click to close the browser window with the PDF document.
  5. If you are finished banking, click to Log Out of Oaken Financial.
  6. For increased security, clear your browser history and cache and close your browser session, if desired.

How Far Back Do Oaken Financial Online Bank Statements Go?

My online statements go back to July 2017. We had an account before that so not all of our statements are archived online.

What Is Shown on the Oaken Annual Financial Portfolio Statement?

We only have GICs and a savings account at Oaken, so I’m not sure what all of their statements may look like.

Ours shows the same information they used to mail us each year:

For each GIC, it shows the issuer, account number, principal amount, issue date, maturity date, interest rate, interest paid and current balance. This can be useful for understanding the interest stated on our T5 slip.

Will I Still Get a Paper Slip Confirming my GIC Purchase from Oaken Financial In the Mail?

Maybe for a while. But soon you may need to check online for your confirmations.

  1. Sign in to Oaken Financial.
  2. From the tab near the top, select Documents & Statements.
  3. From the new list, click on the tab Confirmations.
  4. Click on the name of the GIC for which you wish to print or electronically save the confirmation notice.
  5. The document will open as a PDF file. You can use the print or download icons to save the document.
  6. When you are finished, click to close the browser window with the PDF document.
  7. If you are finished banking, click to Log Out of Oaken Financial.
  8. For increased security, clear your browser history and cache and close your browser session, if desired.

How Do I Set Up Receiving Paper Statements, Confirmations and Tax Slips If I Want Them from Oaken Financial?

If you are willing to pay for them, at a rate in June 2018 of $2 for EACH piece of paper mailed to you, you can still select to receive paper documents.

Actually, I may be premature. It looks like there is only a $2 charge for Savings Account Statements at this stage. However, since you can opt out of receiving paper versions of other documents, I suspect they may implement charges for them in the future. Anyway, to select whether or not you want to receive paper versions:

  1. Sign in to Oaken Financial.
  2. From the tab near the top, select Documents & Statements.
  3. From the new list, click on the tab Preferences.
    There are two sections.Under General Documents, you can check a box to receive the following items electronically and / or on paper in the mail:
    Confirmation of Investments
    Portfolio Statements
    Tax Slips
    Maturity NoticeUnder Savings Account Statements, I expected that you could check a box to receive your statement in the mail, if you agree to pay a $2 charge once each month for each statement you request.

    However, when I checked today on June 18, there is no box to select! I suspect they will add the box in July after they stop mailing out statements. You can always phone them to manage this as their customer support team is very good, in my experience.

  4. Click to select or de-select any checked boxes, as desired.
  5. Click on the Save button.
  6. To confirm the changes, click on the Change button.
  7. Click on the Done button.
  8. If you are finished banking, click to Log Out of Oaken Financial.
  9. For increased security, clear your browser history and cache and close your browser session, if desired.

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Do you keep your bank statements in case of an audit? Do you wish there were a faster way to download and archive them all? Please share your views with a comment.

Why Charging for Mailing Paper Bank Statements May Cost the Banks the Big Bucks

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CIBC recently introduced a fee for receiving paper bank statements. A close relative had a US Dollar account with CIBC that used to issue quarterly paper statements. There is no passbook option for this account. This US Dollar account pays a low rate of interest. And that’s partly why it is now going to cost CIBC a lot more money to do the same business than it cost to print and mail one statement every 3 months.

My relative phoned CIBC to discuss this new fee of $2/statement. She does not have a computer or a cell phone, nor does she
intend to get either. In the past, she reviewed her quarterly statement to make sure the transactions were correct. She also made a note of the interest paid each month for when she filed her tax returns.

How Can One Be Held Responsible for Transactions that May have Been Booked in Error by CIBC?

When this customer phoned CIBC to cancel paper statements because of the new fee, the customer was told she was responsible for ensuring she reported any errors in the account transactions within 30 days of the end of the month. She would be deemed to have received the e-statement at the end of each month.

“Customers must review their account transactions through CIBC Online or Mobile Banking, CIBC Telephone Banking or CIBC bank machines at least once every 30 days and examine all entries and balances at that time. If there are any errors, omissions or irregularities, customers must notify CIBC in writing within 60 days after the date on which the entry was, or should have been, posted to the account.” https://www.cibc.com/ca/chequing-savings/us-personal-acct.html

How, she asked, would she know what transactions had been booked if she couldn’t see the statement? There is no passbook option for the account. CIBC could erroneously book a transaction against the account.

The support person said she could telephone CIBC to check the account balance. (She could also perhaps check the actual transaction history by telephone, that was not clear.)
The customer said “So you mean I’m going to have to now telephone every month to check on my account instead of reading a paper bill once every three months. How is this improving my service?”

The support person had no direct answer. Instead, the support person pointed out that both Rogers and Telus are already using e-statements.

The customer said that comparison has no value. Those are cell phone companies not banks. And the customer does not have a cell phone.

How Can One Check One’s Taxable Earnings without a Statement from CIBC?

Next, the customer explained she had been using the statements to report her interest earnings for income tax. The customer support person said a T5 would be issued for interest over $50. The customer countered that while that is true, the interest on this account would never be high enough to result in a T5.

The customer support person then ALMOST said but you don’t have to report the interest on your taxes. She didn’t quite say it, though it was implied.

The customer explained she always reports all of her interest income and has no intention of breaking the law now. The customer support person then agreed that she could check her interest earnings by telephone each month.

The Cost of One Quarterly Mailed Statement from CIBC vs 12 Telephone Calls to Their 1-888 Number

As a result of this change to a fee for paper statements, this customer has cancelled her paper statements. Instead, she is planning to telephone each month to check her balance, in case there are any unexpected transactions, and to determine the interest paid on the account.

So CIBC is going to have to pay a customer service representative to answer a phone call each month to check the account balance and the transaction history.

I wonder whether the $1 they save on mailing a paper statement will be enough to pay for the time their CSR will be wasting? Not to mention the increased customer dissatisfaction when other banking customers can’t get through to a CSR because the phone line is clogged up with calls checking on transaction balances.

Ridiculous Fees and Ridiculous Demands May Cost CIBC Customers and Free Money

My relative also warned the CIBC customer support person that she may just close the account altogether.

Since CIBC was paying a very low interest rate on the money in that type of account, CIBC will effectively be robbing themselves of using that money for free. Multiply that effect by a few thousand customers and that could be significantly more than the cost of mailing out a few statements.

In conclusion, I think CIBC didn’t really look at all the costs and benefits of these paper statements. Cancelling the paper statements could result in increased call centre volume, increased call centre hold times, losing customers and accounts, and losing access to money at well below overnight posted borrowing rates. It will all depend on how much customers are willing to push back at the banks that are charging their customers money to hold their own money. (Some of us are old enough to remember when banks paid you money to hold your money. And sometimes even gave out toasters with new accounts!)

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Are you tired of banks charging you for the privilege of telling you what they have done with YOUR money? Do you remember the days when banks paid YOU to keep your money in the bank? Please share your experiences with a comment.