Today, I call both TD Direct and National Bank Direct Brokerage customer service. First, I call TD Direct to see if anything was going to be done regarding commission fees, if things will change anytime soon since National Bank Direct Brokerage no longer charges commission fees to buy and sell stock. According to the TD Direct rep, nothing had been announced and for now, nothing will change. In the immediate, TD Direct will continue to charge a $9.99 commission fee to buy or sell stocks on their platform.
From there, it was clear to me: I have to switch to National Bank Direct Brokerage. I asked TD Direct what will be the trading fees. TD answer: $150 per account. This means, if you have a US non-registered account, a Canadian non-registered, a TFSA account, and an RRSP account, you'll be bill $600 for transferring all of your stock shit over to the National Bank. National Bank Direct Brokerage will give you $135 per account that you transferred to help to cover the charges, which make $540. A $60 will have to come from my pocket, which I agree on.
I won't anymore accept to pay $9.99 per trade for buying or selling stocks. After that, I called National Bank Direct Brokerage customer service. On the French line, it said that the waiting delay was 1 h 30... It was possible to schedule an automatic call back, which I asked to keep my priority in the line of calls. And following what I called the English line, and I got someone almost immediately. Fortunately enough, the rep I reached out was speaking French. I could have handled this in a rough and tight English, but I prefer to speak French when possible. I asked if their $0 commission fee thing was just a promotion or if it was there to remain. I was answered that it's here to remain. And from there I asked how to proceed and it goes like this: first, you need to create an account online. Once it's created, in a period of 2 to 5 days, you can call National Bank Direct Brokerage and you can actually proceed with the transfer of your stocks over the phone.
Personally, my transfer wasn't done exactly that way since I already hold a little investment with National Bank, a mutual fund. I connected myself using the link provided by National Bank Direct Brokerage, and I used the login that I currently have in order to open a broker account with the National Bank. I answered a few questions. At a point, their system send me a link to my cell phone via a text message, and I clicked on the link to take a picture of one of my ID, and I also had to take a selfie of myself, which I did with absolutely no makeup on because I simply didn't have time to do better. And finally, I complete a form on which I enter the info in order to proceed with a transfer as is (in French, the correct term would be: comme tel) of all of the stocks I hold, as well as my margin debt, over National Bank Direct Brokerage. That term as is is really important if you want to simply transfer things the way they are currently in your portfolios, and simply have everything transferred - stocks and margin - over your new broker.
While performing a transfer from a broker to another broker, you have many options. As is is one of them, but you can also have all of your stocks sell-off, and only have money transferred to your new broker account. And there seem to be more options available. However, I am not familiar and I didn't get any info on those types of transfers. Personally, I want the as is option please.
I proceed with the as is option today. We'll see how it goes, I will of course keep you posted. At first, the only idea of proceeding to such transfer is scary, but there's nothing to be scared of. Once you decide to proceed, I strongly suggest that you download all the documentation you may have access to from the account that you are leaving behind because once the transfer is being done, your old broker account may get close automatically - I don't know. To download all of your monthly statements for this year and previous years. Personally, I did so, and I download a copy of my orders and I print screen the content of my portfolios in a Word document.
I am just hoping that this transfer will get done quickly. I will keep you posted.
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