Canadian Tire One-and-Only
Canadian Tire has announced that they are getting into the mortgage and chequing account business. They are following other retailers in offering core banking services, but with a twist - an “all in one account” that puts your mortgage, savings and chequing into a single pool of money.
Following Loblaws lead, Canadian Tire started a bank but mostly focused on credit cards (they supposedly have over 4 million cardholders which is a fairly decent portfolio for Canada). They are branching out into core banking services with mortgages, GIC’s, savings accounts and their One-and-Only account. The One-and-Only account works like this:
The Canadian Tire One-and-Only account helps you combine your mortgage, chequing and savings accounts, plus any loans or credit card balances into one easy to operate account. And any money or savings you deposit into your Canadian Tire One-and-Only account, immediately goes towards reducing your outstanding balance and paying off your mortgage sooner.
Source: Canadian Tire Financial Services
This concept is very similar to the Manulife One Account which has actually been around for quite some time in Canada, but seems to fly under the radar. The Manulife concept was based on similar products in the United Kingdom. It is not clear to me who will actually be operating/servicing the chequing, savings and mortgage accounts. Will Canadian Tire be handling this in-house, or outsourcing the back office like Loblaws does with CIBC?
Read more about this on Canadian Tire’s press release.
