Financial Product Reviews

Bitcoin is the world’s first and most favourite cryptocurrency coin in terms of users, market cap, and value. It's an innovative payment network and a new kind of digital money that can be sent from user to user without the need for intermediaries – meaning, no banks.

Canada Life was established in 1847, becoming the first domestic life insurance company founded in Canada. Today’s Canada Life is an amalgamation of Great West Life, London Life, and Canada Life to form one of the largest life insurance companies in Canada. Each of these companies was founded over 125 years ago, so there's a lot of history there.

If you have U.S. income or other sources of U.S. dollars, you can save on the USD to CAD exchange rate by depositing that money into a U.S. dollar account. The Scotiabank U.S. Dollar Daily Interest Account is one of these. Not only does it give you a place to stash your American dollars, it also has a tiered interest rate that goes up based on your daily balance in the account.

As one of 5 available Scotiabank savings accounts, the Scotiabank Savings Accelerator Account is one of the more unique options you can go with. That’s because you can choose to include it as part of a non-registered or registered investment plan.

The Scotiabank Money Master Savings Account is Scotiabank’s basic savings account. It’s a safe and convenient way to begin saving money, as it has no monthly account fees or minimum balance requirements. It also allows for unlimited no-fee transfers to other Scotiabank accounts, meaning your money is more easily accessible than in traditional savings accounts.

The Scotia Total Equity Plan is a parcel of credit products you can access by leveraging the equity you have in your home. This sounds more complicated than it is, really – this is really just a slightly fancier home equity line of credit (HELOC), meaning you can get low-interest credit that is secured by your house.

Most of Canada’s big banks offer insurance, including Scotiabank. On their website, Scotiabank has some information about their insurance offerings, including auto, life, health, travel, creditor, and home insurance. And by “some information,” we mean…some. There’s really not a lot of detail available on their website or when you get an online quote, so it’s really hard to know what’s available.

The Tangerine Savings Account is a digital savings account offered by Tangerine Bank. The shining feature of this account is its welcome bonus – a strong 4.5% for 5 months. After the solid start, the interest rate goes down to 0.3%, which is still competitive with the big 5 banks.

Alterna Bank is a digital bank that offers a TFSA eSavings Account with a competitive interest rate of 1.15%, no monthly fees, and no minimum balance. Though it’s a lesser known online bank, your balance is still secured through the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC).

Saving for the future has never been more important. Whether you're saving for a rainy day, building an emergency fund, for planning for your eventual retirement, you want to get an account with the best savings interest rate you can.