Banking business

Doing banking business here is definitely not as simple and straight-forward as in Finland, and the infrastructure here lags behind all Europe. The six big banks in Canada - like the three big; Sampo, Nordea and Osuuspankki in Finland - are Royal Bank, TD Canada Trust, Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank and Scotiabank. We first went with one of the big ones, and set up an account for me there.

Within the first week, I ran into strange problems while trying to do online banking. No money at all could be transferred to my account from Carey's or our other accounts, not even after several attempts. "If I'm unable to receive money to my own account, then what will happen to my first paycheck? Will I be able to receive money at all," I asked, as we called the customer service line.

To my surprise, the customer service agent was not only unable to help me and solve the problem, but also unable to give me any reasonable explanation to why was I having these problems. The guy just gave us some sort of a vague explanation about the account being new, and that because of that there are some security restrictions, and so I won't be able to fully use the account yet.

Security restrictions? So basically the bank was telling me that they won't let me receive money to my account due to "safety." Safety - whose safety - the bank's or mine? While I was already busy developing a conspiracy theory or two about how the bank's trying to steal my money, the customer service guy told me to go to my branch the next day and ask them to solve the issue.

Actually going to a bank isn't something that I used to do very often in Finland, as online banking services there are generally so well developed that there's no need to go in anymore (and that's exactly what the banks there have wanted to do, too, in order to be able to close their offices and lay off people, which isn't a great solution either, but I didn't really mind it, because I liked the online services better anyway), so I was quite frustrated that I needed to take an hour off work to go ask why and how does the bank think they can prevent me from getting any money on my account.

At the bank, I talked with the same guy as when I originally opened the account. He was friendly and gave me fast service, but seemed to think that I was making a bigger issue out of something small and not so out of the ordinary. He couldn't solve the problem right away, either, but promised to deal with it by the end of the day. And so he did - by 5 PM my account started working - but he, too, failed to give me any explanation on why the account hadn't been working right away after I opened it.

Let's see - why did, and do, I think it it was a bigger issue than just a little oopsie? Well, I'm used to a much better banking infrastructure in Finland, while at the same time the service fees there are a lot smaller than here. I knew well before I moved here that there's some old technology still in use here, while in Finland the system has been updated years and years ago, but it still hurts me when it actually hits me - i.e. now that I actually have to use banks here, they give me constant frustration.

In Canada, cheques are still in every-day use. I know that Canada isn't nearly the only country left in the world, where cheques are still widely used, but in Finland we gave them up already in 1993 (and even before that cheques had become rare there). Why? Because cheques are paper-based, unreliable and unsafe, and costly for banks to print. In most countries around the world and in Europe in particular, the rise of ATMs, credit and debit cards and, most importantly, direct bank transfer and electronic payment, has led to an era of easy access to cash, which has made the necessity of writing a cheque to someone because the banks were closed a thing of the past.

A thing of the past, yes, but not here. Here banks don't have access to a modern, centralized system like in Finland, and that makes even the simplest things, like sending money from one bank to another, using any ATM on the street or making an electronic payment to, say, your landlord, weirdly complicated. Here each bank has, first and foremost, got its own systems, networks and bank machines, and if you are one bank's customer, you have to pay a fee to use another bank's bank machine or even a higher fee if you use a non-bank-affiliated ATM (which are quite common here).

In Finland, the thinking is that since in the modern world everybody needs to have a bank account to go about daily life, everybody should have access to their own money without having to pay a fee for it. There, banks can charge you for account services, online banking and cards and other additional services like here, but not for the use of any bank machine operated by the central Otto system (which means every ATM in the country). That's common interest there, and seen as a basic "right."

But here it's not. In North American "free market economy" banks can run "free," which has led to a system where every bank has got its own, often quite underdeveloped system without easy, simple access to other banks' systems. And many people here seem to think of that as normal.

So what do I get here? I get poorer services, less security (just look at any of the Canadian banks' online banking systems' login page), less bank machines that I can use for free, no easy electronic payments, BUT yes - higher fees. Here with the big bank I first went with, I pay 4 times more for basic services like a debit card, a bank account and online banking than in Finland, where the same services are, in many ways, almost 20 years ahead of Canadian (and American) banking systems. Electronic payments across the European Union are fast and free now, and much more efficient than payments within just the United States or Canada, when the money isn't even crossing the country's borders.

Ok, ok, I live here now and I just have to take it. But I don't have to take it all, because luckily there are some alternatives here, too. We went to the local Osuuspankki - Finnish Credit Union here and set up our accounts there instead. They can't give me much better online banking services than anyone else, but their fees are less than half of what I would pay to any of the big banks here. And Osuuspankki is 100% owned by its customers, a true co-op. So there - kiss my ass, Big Bank of Canada that's stuck in the 20th century.