President’s Choice to CIBC – Are You on Board?
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PC Financial Free Banking Ends
On August 16, 2017 the news broke that CIBC is ending its almost 20-year relationship with President’s Choice Financial and will offer free banking through its own Simplii Financial. This news put 2 million PC Financial (PCF) customers in limbo as everyone is trying to make sense of this breakup.
The main reason people signed up with online banking provider PCF was to avoid big banks like CIBC (and pay no banking fees for basic banking) and now customers are all back under the same giant. CIBC mentioned there will be no change in anything such as account information or fees and business will be as usual under CIBC’s new free banking division Simplii, but confusion and uncertainty remain palpable.
There are talks about CIBC’s cutting some features customers have been enjoying for free with PCF and also declining in customer service satisfaction. PCF offered excellent customer service provided by call centres located in Canada. So it will be interesting to see if it starts to move over to India or somewhere else. A PCF representative mentioned to me that CIBC is moving over all PCF reps under its wing and customer service will be provided by the same group of people as before.
For now, customers remain cautious and will wait and see how the transformation plays out. There are other free online banking providers out there and if things go downhill, CIBC will definitely lose a good chunk of loyal customers who have been with PCF for years.
I have a video on this and you can watch by clicking the link below or on the picture at the top right.
